The Oliver Harvey Customer Survey: From 2017 to 2018

Traditionally, we have always written up our ‘Key Takeaways’ following our annual Customer Surveys, outlining what your responses have told us about our company, our products and our customer service. We intend to continue this practice as we feel that our customers should be able to see that their responses are taken on board but this year we feel we can go one step further. Around 38% of our customers last year stated that we didn’t respond to their suggestions in the survey. Therefore, in anticipation of our 2018 Oliver Harvey Customer Survey we thought we would go back to last year’s survey and demonstrate how your responses have had a direct impact on our products, service and general operations.

Let’s start with products. 28% of customers who completed 2017’s survey stated that there were gaps in our ranges. Specifically, aprons and chef shoes were areas you thought we needed to particularly work on.

As one of our chefs eloquently described the ‘apron is the only bit of individuality available as far as clothing goes’. We can’t have a tagline of ‘Designed to Stand Out’ without our customers feeling they are doing wearing our aprons! Variety is key, which is why we have expanded almost all of our apron ranges to accommodate this. The Custom Cross Back Apron has had significantly more styles, colours and an additional shorter length added to it. We also released the Custom Waist Apron builder to give our customers creative free reign over their own look.

After our successful collaboration with Fat Punk Studios. Finally we also added a new longer length variation to our Black, Grey and Navy Chef Bib Aprons giving our taller chefs an extra 6 inches of coverage. Moving forward we have completely redesigned our Waist Apron range adding two additional colours and a new sewn pocket to increase both the diversity and functionality of this particular range. We are hoping this will be on the site in the coming weeks.

We completely agreed with the feedback of the 2017 Customer Survey regarding our chef shoe range being somewhat limited. Attention is too often given to chef jackets, hats and aprons and shoes are deprioritised despite the fact they can often have the most profound positive impact when done right. That’s why we have massively expanded our chef shoe range in terms of both variety and style.

Shoes for Crews are one of the most reliable and trusted brands in the hospitality shoe market and so we felt a range of their more dynamic, look-orientated shoes would be a great addition to Oliver Harvey’s catalogue. The success of the Low Rider IV and the Carter, the Ollie IIhttps://www.oliverharvey.co.uk/products/chef-shoes/shoes-for-crews-old-school-low-rider-iv. In terms of comfortable shoes do we think anything other than Birkenstock? If you’re edgy, possibly, but it’s the gold standard for shoes that will never let you down. Again the success of our wider Birkenstock range has shown this was something our customers really wanted. Finally and only last month, we added a range of vibrant, style orientated chef shoes from Mozo which really do get the balance of fashion and practicality spot on. We’re confident they’ll be another triumph.

Over the past 12 months we have added new products to every single one of our ranges because it was important to you, so it’s important to us! I’m sure we still aren’t covering every product our customers want but that’s precisely why we do our Customer Survey, to find out what we can do. We now also have the Oliver Harvey Product Innovation Page on Facebook so make sure if you weren’t able to complete this year’s survey you leave your thoughts and suggestions there and we’ll get back to you.

As proud as we are about our high quality products, we think it’s our service that truly makes us stand out! 95% of our customers either rated us 4 or 5 stars for our customer service.  In addition to this, 72% argued that our customer service added ‘much value’ to their order. We are immeasurably proud of this but that doesn’t mean we don’t think we can do more!

To further our customer service we created two Facebook groups to give our customers a platform to engage with us in a more intimate way. The aforementioned Oliver Harvey Product Innovation Page and the Oliver Harvey Community Page we think are the way forward to enhancing our relationship with our customers and we urge everyone to utilise these platforms to engage with us however and whenever they want to.

It was also evident from the 2017 survey that the ability to track your order was a gap in our service and ordering process. That’s why we enabled a tracking system for our registered customers so they can always keep an eye on where their order is and when it’s arriving.

Our Oliver Harvey freebies were also important to our customers. On this we have done nothing but ensure that we always have filled shelves of Sharpies and air fresheners so every order is accompanied by our signature touches. Going the extra mile is what Oliver Harvey has always been about so we are looking forward to seeing what more we can do following our 2018 Customer Survey.

We hope that over the years we have built a great relationship with all our customers. Without analysing this excessively we believe that this is down to a strong, mutual trust. This article has demonstrated how we have listened to our customers and implemented what we can in order to ensure we remain the best chefwear company in Britain and probably the world. But trust is built on honesty. There have been a few things suggested by our customers we have simply not been able to enact. This is not because the comments were unrealistic, unachievable or daft, quite the opposite in fact, but rather we simply can’t put everything into effect in the space of a year.

This is important to us because we want all our customers to know that even if a particular suggestion has not been implemented it has been registered, logged and analysed. Every comment and criticism from our customers we receive matters because without it we cannot grow into the business we want to be.

One area we need to continue working on are our Chef Trousers. 44% of our customers said last year that the sizing was between ‘acceptable’ and ‘wrong fit’. We are constantly reflecting on our range of trousers. We added the Lincoln Chef Trouser this year, a more style orientated, slim-fit option which has been a moderate success. However we know are customers want more from us so rest assured we will continue develop this particular range of products.

Overall, we are confident that we have responded effectively to the results of our 2017 Customer Survey and will be able to do so again following 2018’s. We really value every single comment we receive and although cannot implement every single one within a year it’s taken on board and allows us to understand what are customer’s want more productively. We urge all our community to participate in the Oliver Harvey 2018 Customer Survey because it’s really important to us we get as many opinions and perspectives as possible. Make sure you have your say by signing up to our email list if you haven’t already. Don’t forget our 20% discount for anyone who complete it!