Response to the Oliver Harvey Customer Survey 2018

We had our best response yet to our Annual Customer Survey. Find out what we are serving up next here:

As Oliver Harvey continues to grow and grow, so too does our response to our annual Customer Survey. This year’s was staggering! We had 429 participants which illustrates not only our importance to chefs and front of house staff across the country and beyond, but also that more and more people feel invested in Oliver Harvey. We take enormous pride in this because we want our customers to have a strong sense of ownership of our business. This is why we take our customer surveys so seriously because it remains our best platform of communication with a wide variety of people, all of whom share Oliver Harvey.

Like with previous years we have several, ‘Key Takeaways’ from 2018’s iteration. Overall, the response was overwhelmingly positive, which is fantastic thank you to everyone for all your kind words. However, that doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels. There has been some significant feedback on certain aspects of our business and our customer service. We have taken both the positives and the constructive criticisms on board and shall outline our next steps for the coming year here:

       1. Maintaining our Customer Service

 We’ll start off with a positive. Our overall customer service received an aggregate score of 4.48/5 which is absolutely wonderful. But it also means we have to work additionally hard to maintain such a high regard with our customers. Our service is something we feel makes us stand above other chefswear companies and so it is at the heart of everything we do. Our Oliver Harvey customer service is going nowhere!

        2. Next Day Delivery

73% of our survey participants stated that they would be interested in Next Day Delivery. As some of you may be aware we have recently purchased and are currently renovating our adjacent industrial unit. This is a huge step for Oliver Harvey and it means that Next Day Delivery is certainly on the cards. With a larger space we can produce and stock more of our quintessentially British products. With more stock means reduced lead times and thus Next Day Delivery becomes possible. However, we are not rushing this process. Rather than deliver to our customers a false promise or offer something we cannot implement to our own high standards we want to review our facility and ability to provide Next Day Delivery. This will involve several trials to make sure before it goes live that every potential issue has been identified and resolved long before it reaches our customers. If you say Next Day you mean next day so there’s no margin for error. It might not be this year, but it’s happening!

        3. Mobile Orientated Emails and Order Tracking

 In 2017, we received substantial feedback about our customer’s ability to track their orders. We rolled out a tracking platform on our emails and website to resounding success. However, we have once again revised our communication strategy for you to ensure that it’s as clear and user friendly as possible. Over the past few weeks we have developed a new mobile orientated email format in response to the 2018 Customer Survey. For the first time, Mobile (53%) overtook Desktop (46%) as the principal device for ordering. This trend will undoubtedly continue over the next few years. Our operations must reflect that!  Therefore our new order confirmation emails not only deliver greater clarity on order tracking, providing our a dispatch date as opposed to a tracking number, but also is more suited to you and how you interact with us.

        4. New Products – Kitchen Accessories

Over the course of the year, we have added several new products and a few new ranges to our catalogue. This has been received well with our customers. We always ask in our survey, do you feel there is a gap in our range? This fell by 7% from 2017. However that doesn’t mean we are providing everything. Something our customer’s asked for really took us by surprise….Kitchen Accessories. Over 80% stated they were interested in this, and specifically we had innumerable comments about knife rolls and kitchen bags. Investigations are under way! We want to explore every potential avenue of how to deliver these types of products, whether that be part of our Handpicked Collection or something we start to make ourselves. This is something we want to get absolutely right because along with our service and our relationship with our customers, the quality of Oliver Harvey is what we feel makes us stand out. We shall keep you informed of developments.

        5. New Products – More Apron Choices

Our customers love our aprons! Since Oliver Harvey began we have constantly reviewed, innovated and developed our apron ranges. This is something we see as an ongoing process and in 2018 our customers want more. That’s why this Spring we are adding denim options to our Cross Back Apron Builder. There will be a Black, Grey and Indigo base options in both a long and short version. We know that our customers like to customise their own look so we are confident with these new additions they’ll be able to do exactly that. We are looking forward to the feedback on this when they go live most likely by the start of May.

        6. Customers and Oliver Harvey

Every year we ask what are influencing factors behind purchasing Oliver Harvey. The options range from Style, to Price, to British Made. In 2018 the response to this question was fascinating in comparison to previous years. Traditionally, Style and Price were the runaway leaders with a clear gap with the other four options. However this year they all received a very similar score of around 3.6/5. This suggests to us that people have their own individual relationship with Oliver Harvey and find value in a unique aspect of what we do. We would love to know if this conclusion is correct and hear from you in greater detail about why you choose Oliver Harvey. We would be truly appreciative it if you could email us or post in one of our Facebook groups about this.

In conclusion, the 2018 Customer Survey has once again been an eye opener into our customers and what they want us to do over the coming year. We have been given plenty to work on and it’s already in motion. We wish to thank everyone who took part again because it really does make a difference and we hope that you will continue to communicate with us all year round.