Brintons Carpets
Case Study
Website: http://www.brintons.net
Sector: Fine Carpets
Background
Brintons Carpets represents over 200 years of tradition and craftmanship in carpet manufacture. Their name stands for quality and trust and is synonymous with some of the most prestigious carpeting projects around the globe. Facing aggressive competition Brintons have become increasingly focussed on their long term market position.
To support this, a package of measures including a customer research programme, communication evaluation audit and personnel training was launched in mid 2005. EWA was commissioned by Brintons to conduct the communication evaluation audit and to deliver recommendations for communications, contact processes, customer service and customer value models.
Action
The audit involved a wide cross section of Brintons internal and field staff, who impact directly or indirectly on the customer experience - and a representation of customers both live and lapsed. The multitude of actual and potential customer touch points made this particular audit a complex and protracted undertaking.
Controlled, qualitative interviews were conducted with over 60 individuals based around a series of consistent customer service and support questions. To gain a complete picture, these ranged from employees understanding of Brintons corporate goals, to whether or not lapsed customers were still being contacted regularly.
The resulting analysis, developed through cross-referencing of responses from all sources, produced recommendations in three distinct stages – the irrefutable: recommendations based on the most consistent responses across all interview groups - the hard to argue: recommendations around a smaller, but significant body of evidence - and the logical conclusion: recommendations for a total corporate communications strategy.
Results
At the time of this publication (winter 2005), EWA have only recently presented our findings to Brintons carpets – a comprehensive submission containing over 14 major recommendations, with a multiple sub-set of associated and conditional proposals.
Fundamentally, the recommendations will completely re-shape corporate interactions and profoundly affect the way Brintons consider and conduct customer communications. Customers will see a remarkably different culture – joined-up communications, relevant messages, consistent responses, treatment in keeping with status, potential and value. Brintons employees will have a clear view of their objectives and targets and be availed with the tools knowledge and empowerment for successful customer development and retention.
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