One of the attributes of achieving this award has been the investment in training the company has made. Therefore, it has been a double celebration for Kellaway, as we won the award for best training initiative. These are perhaps the two award categories which best recognise efforts and initiatives carried out by all the staff within the company and goes some way to recognising and thanking them for their efforts.

Kellaway won back the Best Customer Service Award – how is the current climate affecting that side of the business, especially since November?

It was a fantastic achievement for us to win the Customer Service award in 2006, and we were delighted to be runners up in 2007. To win it back again in 2008 is confirmation that our efforts are working. As we wrote in our award submission, customer service is not about one or two initiatives put in place in a company, it’s the approach across all aspects of the company, both internally and externally.

It is true to say that the current climate has had an effect on business over the winter months, however we are noticing some stability returning to the market and a growth in confidence amongst our customers. Perhaps the most interesting and positive thing to come out of this climate is the focus from the teams in the business.

Our staff take pride in what they do, and they can be credited for remaining positive in some bleak situations, coming up with ideas to help generate new business, putting them forward and developing them. We have found that our customers have become far more priceconscious, therefore the relationship between branches and their customers has remained key in retaining spend and keeping communication going. This is where good customer service has paid dividends because it adds value to the relationship as it makes customers far easier to deal with when you have a good relationship with them.

There is often a fine line between customer relationship and business needs in this climate. We may often need to deal with some very delicate matters in protecting our income, while not upsetting customers. This is where customer service training can give our staff the toolkit they need to balance between a sympathetic ear and a member of staff acting in the best interests of the company.

Although we are not perfect and it would be fair to say we do not get it right every time, we do always endeavour to make things right in the end, retaining the working relationship where we can and often ending up with a stronger, more loyal customer relationship.

We also analyse and learn from any issues which may arise, looking at what we could have done differently and how we would improve if faced with that situation again.

How has training in particular fared since the Awards in November? Have there been any changes in either external or in-house training?

Like all businesses, the focus has remained on achieving best value in everything we do and to ensure we continue to invest for the future, not just cost save for today. Our effective in-house training facility, combined with the wide range of skills and talents in the company, has nabled us to support our branch and head office teams through a period of trading the likes of which some have not seen before.

We identified that in order to maximise our customer offer, we have all had to use whatever skills are available to us, while strictly controlling costs. The unfortunate trading climate has meant that the company’s growth strategy has not been able to continue at the pace it once did. However, it has given us time to consolidate the learning curve we’ve been on as an organisation,and perhaps allowed us to go back to basics in how we come across to our customers and analyse this.

We have asked ourselves questions such as: Are we doing our best? What are we doing wrong? What could we be doing better? How can we offer the customer base even better value?

This has presented us with many opportunities to engage in training, not only in-house, but supplier-led and on the job. For example, we have identified the need to further develop our merchandising skills within the company, and as such have devised a new in-house training programme which customerfacing staff are part of.

Out of this training is an individual and branch action plan to implement some of the new skills learnt, whereby the results are followed up by key team members who all have an inputinto the company’s strategy. This could be anyone from directors through to the whole management team – all as part of their every day rolewhen they visit a branch.

In addition to this the company has developed new customer service training modules, refreshing the already excellent level of training, perhaps pulling in examples from other industries such as retail, as we now look to
these as the benchmark. We do this rather than compare ourselves to the merchant industry as we
want to continue our company mission of providing excellent service and continue to raise the bar.

We are moving away from classroom learning to interactive workshops, which give us more benefits. They’re less formal, so staff interaction is better and we get an interaction between job roles, too.While in a challenging market, price will always be a key driver, but our relationship with our customer remains a very high priority and allows us tocontinue as one of our unique selling points.

We constantly aim to provide our customer with an excellent level of service – which is also dedicated to
saving them money – and becoming an effective and efficient supply chain for them.

Are there plans to develop training further in the future?

We are already working with some key suppliers to look at more sophisticated merchandising training which may
include an element of mystery shopping, benchmarking and best practice assessment.

In addition to this, we are also looking at developing our sales training to provide our key front-end staff with the skills and tools they need to perform in the current environment.We have enjoyed high levels of trade for a long period and we predictthe demands on the business and our staff will be very different over the next 18-24 months.

We need to focus on a proactive approach to our customers and ensure we are maximising the business opportunities.Customers will have a different set of expectations and the training we develop will ensure we rise to the challenge and that of the market.

How does Kellaway see the future developing?
The outlook for Kellaway remains bright. The company will continue to invest in training the team to deliver ever
higher standards of customer service and will listen to the customer base to respond to their ever-changing needs. Kellaway will continue its growth strategy when the right opportunities at the right time present themselves.

Development is pressing ahead with a brand new site in Swindon where we will relocate from our current
Swindon premises towards the end of 2009, which is a sure sign of commitment to customers, staff and
the industry in general.

The market will remain challenging for some time and our customers will continue to demand the best from
their suppliers. We see this as a chance to show how well we can perform, whatever the market, ensuring that customer service remains at the heart of the business strategy, no matter how big the company grows. It is a tried, tested and successful business model.