Yesterday, I drove over to Wellingborough for our annual car service for our Vauxhall Insignia.

This is a source of much hilarity to my family as there is a Vauxhall garage just five minutes from where we live, yet we choose to drive an hour and a half (ish) round trip twice a year for a service and MOT.

The reason we do this is simple. Because we know we get exceptional customer service.

We’ve been going to the same dealership we bought our car from since we purchased it about 9 years ago because we’ve built a relationship with the people who work there and because crucially, we feel we can trust them.

We might pay a little bit more as they’re a branded garage, but we value the service we get so much, that it more than compensates for this. We know most of the staff by name, and they even know the names of our children – just from a bi-annual trip! (see image below from our family WhatsApp group taken in December 2017 – the trip to Wellingborough is honestly a big talking point!!)

It’s experiences like this that makes us put such a high emphasis on customer service for our own, family run business.

In an online world, we know that you have choice. We know that there is a wealth of wedding stationery designs on the internet that you could purchase. But what you perhaps wouldn’t get, is the chance to build a personal relationship with someone. That may very well be not important to you, but for those of you who find the world of wedding stationery overwhelming, being able to come in and talk to someone face to face could be just what you need.

We are about to make some heavy investment in overhauling our website because we do understand the importance of an online presence, but what we also believe in, is people. That’s why our 10 year plan also involves opening up a number of smaller showrooms across the home counties to continue that personal touch which is quickly being diminished by the world wide web.

If you choose to use us as your wedding stationery supplier, here are three things that you can expect from us:

EXPERT ADVICE:

We will talk to you about your Big Day and we will listen with genuine interest. We will talk to you about what is available, and what you need. We are of course a business, and we need to make money, but we will never try and sell you something you don’t need. In fact, we will never try and sell you anything as we like to think our products sell themselves!

CHOICE AND VARIETY:

We have over 200 designs and styles in our showroom because our sole aim in business is to help people to choose the perfect design for their wedding and what’s perfect for one person, isn’t for another. We don’t have a particular company style because our designs have been developed over 10 years of working with brides and grooms, all of whom have different taste. Also in our showroom, you’ll be able to choose from a wide variety of card and ribbon swatches. You’ll be able to see these in real life, first hand – not on a computer screen.

COMPETITIVE PRICES:

We consider ourselves to be competitively priced for the product and service we provide, but there are many other sellers on the likes of E-Bay who constantly undercut full-time companies like ours and I’m afraid we can’t compete with them. Now and then, we’ll get someone visit us and say ‘I’ve seen this on EBay for £1.50’, and we’ll politely explain that we just can’t compete with that and that they should probably buy from there if price point is the most important thing to them. But then they’ll say ‘but, the design isn’t quite what I want and I want to tweak it but they won’t do that for me’, or ‘when the sample came through, it was terrible’, or ‘I keep emailing them and I can’t get a response’, and it’s then that you can see why their Google search has developed beyond ‘cheap wedding invitations’.

I’m writing this blog whilst sat in a pub, watching England v Sri Lanka in the Cricket World Cup as even when I’m not in the office, I tend to be thinking about the business and how we can develop it to best serve our customers.

But the garage has just called with a list of things that need doing; apparently the rear wiper needs changing and the front brake pads are going to need attention in a few months time. Oh, and the front tyre is wearing down. This is a good few hundred pounds of work which I suppose they could try and encourage me to spend today, but when I ask if it needs to be done right now, they’re honest and tell me that only the rear wiper needs doing with any urgency.

That’s customer service, and that’s why we keep coming back.