Connections

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

No connection to this week’s subject, but I thought you might like to see this creative graffiti I saw in Paris last Wednesday.

Last week was all about connections. We had some great meetings at SIAL in Paris. That’s what shows like that are all about. Some of the most influential and creative people within the food industry altogether in one place at the same time - at least 30,000 I would estimate. And didn’t we know it when getting the RER train back to the centre of Paris every day. This is the best show I go to, but the worst transport away from it every time - at least the show is every other year. The situation was made worse than ever by three people throwing themselves in front of trains within 2 hours of each other. A sober reminder that whilst Paris is perceived as a great place to go for most of us - the reality of living there is a long way from that for some. We had over two hours to think about this during what should have been half an hour.

Whilst away BT managed to cut our broadband cable which still remains down as I write. We have rigged up a 3G dongle to allow e-mails and internet connectivity. By the time this blog is published we will have lost internet connectivity for nearly a week. BT Openreach are the engineers for all broadband but no-one is allowed to talk to them. This from the CEO of BTBusiness via twitter to me, “you have to go through your own supplier as Openreach are not allowed to deal directly with customers”
And the fact is that our supplier doesn’t seem to be able to apply any pressure to them at all - all very frustrating!

However, we have done our best in adversity to remain connected to our customers by regular tweets, an e-mail to all customers advising of situation and by calling key customers who order via e-mail to let them know. By the end of the week we had a 3G dongle installed at our own cost (not BT’s) to enable us to download e-mails, so I spent a happy Saturday morning from 7 a.m. in the office replying to 150 general e-mails, and then later in the day at home trawling through 300 personal e-mails. One did make me laugh sent earlier in the week when our e-mails were down. A customer had replied to the mass e-mail we sent out saying that we couldn’t’ receive e-mails, saying that they were struggling to contact us, and please could someone call them! Don’t you just love customers?!

It was rather strange being cut off from e-mails for what seemed an age and was actually only 4 days. It made me realise how much we rely on them and also how much time we waste reading them and replying to them. We still had a strong business at the end of the week - very good sales and probably had all been a lot more efficient! Around 40% of the e-mails that eventually came in once we had installed the 3G dongle were not SPAM, but didn’t need reading, and certainly didn’t add much to my enlightenment! Maybe we all ought to try an e-mail free week! Let me know how you get on if you do!