Diamond service for a Diamond celebration

I was looking for something really special to celebrate the launch of Epoc's new Diamond and Crystal beds at Decorex International 2012, not only because they are the first beds in the UK to feature Biocrystal technology for an extra restful sleep, but because the first limited edition Diamond bed, named in honour of The Queen's Diamond Jubilee, has been gifted to The Royal Foundation of The Duke and Duchess of Cambridge and Prince Harry and is expected to fetch in excess of £20,000 when auctioned in the run up to Christmas.

That's not something that happens every day and a special gift for my contacts at Biocrystal and Epoc was in order.  So I asked the biscuiterie if they could make some iced biscuits in the shapes of - you've guessed it - diamonds and crystals.

The team at the biscuiterie, which is a new business this year, replied very promptly to my e-mails, sent pictures of what the biscuits would look like, and took payment by PayPal, which made it very easy for me to pay.

They then sent the biscuits in a strong box protected by plenty of bubble wrap, which meant they survived being posted from Northamptonshire to my home in Cumbria, a train journey from Cumbria to London, and being carried across London by tube in a rucksack, without a single biscuit being cracked or broken in the process.

My contacts at Biocrystal and Epoc were absolutely delighted with the biscuits - and so was I.  You can see why - they're stunning.

Thank you Matthew and Mylene for a great product and excellent service!

Eastern promise fulfilled

I booked a flight on Eastern Airways, following a scheduled client meeting.

The client postponed the meeting to another day.

I've had experience of what usually happens if you need to move a flight.  Sometimes you have to kiss your money goodbye and book again from scratch.  British Airways let you change your flight but they charge you a £60 admin fee for the privilege.  And as for moving a flight to an as yet unspecified day?  I've never asked any airline that before, and I wasn't holding my breath.

But when I e-mailed Eastern Airways to explain, I had a response within 15 minutes from a lovely friendly lady called Sarah, who said that she could put the flight on hold and I could re-book it as soon as I was ready.

Quick response, delivering exactly what the customer wanted, something that competitors can't or won't normally do, and friendly and cheerful too.  Fantastic.

So long as the flight, when I actually take it, lives up to the standards of the customer service team, Eastern Airways will leapfrog BA as my airline of choice.

Accounts production software

I look after accounts for friends and family, which includes three limited companies.  That means I need professional accounts production software to help make sure I put everything in the right place and comply with the Companies Act 2006 and other rules and regulations.

I used, quite happily, to use VT Accounts Production running on Parallels on my Mac.  But when I switched PC-emulation software to VMWare, VT really didn't like that.  It kept corrupting.  And VT isn't supported on a Mac so there was no help available - but they were very good about giving me a refund.

By then I had a PC at home - it's my husband's actually but he lets me use it :-)

TaxCalc's Accounts Production software is very expensive for what it is (£499 + VAT), when you consider what VT and PTP cost.  VT costs £150 + VAT per year and PTP only £99 + VAT a year.  But I needed something urgently and I was able to download TaxCalc straight away.  That initially worked sweet as a nut but then for some reason it decided it didn't want to behave.  Support tried their best to fix it but after two attempts that didn't work, I lost patience and I asked for a refund - which I did get in the end.

Now I'm using PTP, from IRIS.  As I used to use the full range of IRIS software it felt blessedly familiar.  I could even remember some of the account code numbers it uses.

My only gripe was having to do 3 separate downloads to get this up and running - first .NET, then SQL, then finally PTP.  It would have been much easier to run that all as one download.  And it took three hours to run everything.

Still, that's all safely loaded now, and I've done 2 and a half sets of accounts today - a half because I'm still waiting on a set of bank statements to do the current year's accounts, but I've been able to post up the prior year and notes.

And I'm now looking to switch from TaxCalc to PTP tax software as well, I think.  PTP is all integrated and that saves a bucketload of time and reduces the risk of error.

But right now, my brain's gone to sleep.  I'd hoped to get this all done by lunchtime but the long downloads put the kibosh on that.  I need a very large cup of tea.

 

Why the BBC didn't make this customer happy

I think the Queen is a truly remarkable lady and I was really looking forward to watching the Diamond Jubilee river pageant today.  As well as the sheer spectacle and scale, I was looking forward to finding out more about the boats involved, their histories, their crews, and so forth - and also to hearing some of the music from the barges carrying choirs, orchestras and bands.

I thought the BBC television coverage would provide that.

How wrong I was.

They kept showing the same kind of picture, aerial views of the man-powered boats, and hardly had any coverage of the historic ships.  For example there was no mention at all of the "Matthew" replica.  The powered boats also only got a few shots in and very limited information.  And even for the man-powered boats, they only gave tiny snippets of information about one or two of the vessels and their crews.

And we didn't get to hear any of the music.

The BBC even kept hopping back to studio shots.

There was so much more they could have done with this afternoon's coverage - like more information about the different ships, identifying some of the lesser known Commonwealth countries' flags, playing excerpts from some of the music.

Instead the coverage came across as poorly researched and light on information - not at all what I would expect from the BBC.

Is David Cameron right?

David Cameron famously said he doesn't want the coalition to be seen as "a bunch of accountants".

To my view that's a sad indictment of how much of the wider business community regards accountants.  We're popularly viewed as reactive, regressive, backward-looking stuffed shirts who can't explain things in plain English to save our lives, don't want to know about anything resembling progress in the technological arena, charge astronomical fees that mount up every time the client calls, and are more of a necessary evil than anything else.

That's a stereotype, but how far is it true?

I attended a seminar last week given by Steve Pipe, who's a fantastically dynamic speaker and great advocate for proactivity amongst accountants.  Steve's view is that:

"Accountancy is a noble profession, clients deserve nothing less than extraordinarily great service and accountants deserve great rewards".

I agree with that.  But we can't deliver extraordinarily great service unless we stop looking in the rear-view mirror, give real-time practical advice in the moment by embracing technology, stop spouting accounting-speak and learn to talk to clients in plain English.  Say "trade debtors" to anyone who's neither an accountant nor a bookkeeper and their eyes will, quite rightly, glaze over.  Try saying "customers who owe you money" instead.  Bingo.  Wasn't it Einstein who said that if you can't explain something simply, you don't understand it properly yourself?

Let's wake up and smell the coffee, and show David Cameron he's wrong!

A gold star for Lands' End

I regularly buy clothing from Lands' End, who sell excellent quality casual and smart casual wear.

In the autumn I bought two pairs of leggings from them. Recently I noticed one pair had begun to come apart at the seams, so I posted that pair back to Lands' End and asked for a new pair and a refund of postage.

That parcel went in the post on Monday.

My new pair arrived today - Saturday. Less than a week later.

With a refund of postage notification.

What great service.

We all make mistakes. Sooner or later every business sells a faulty stock line, or doesn't give tip-top service. But making a mistake is the perfect opportunity to "wow" a customer by putting it right.

Lands' End just wowed me.

That means I'm not only going to go back and buy from them again, but I'll recommend them as a great business to buy from.

White poppy for peace and respect

Forgive the off topic nature of this post, please folks - it's Remembrance Sunday and I'd like to share my reasons for wearing the white poppy rather than a red one.

My Quaker faith includes a testimony to peace and nonviolence. But the nature of Quakerism is that nothing is forbidden or prescribed, and Quakers have no creeds. We all have to make our own choices.

In the two World Wars, a lot of Quakers were conscientious objectors. Many served with the Friends' Ambulance Unit to help care for battlefield casualties. But one or two fought. Robert Lawrence Smith, a lifelong Quaker, explains in his book "A Quaker Book of Wisdom" that he chose to fight in the American army during the Second World War because he felt that a lasting peace could not be built until the "unspeakable evil" of Nazism was removed.

So I don't have to wear the white poppy because I happen to be a Quaker. It's a matter of choice.

And I don't agree with those who say that to wear the white poppy is disrespectful to the armed forces and to those who've died in the service of their country.

My white poppy shows that I wish to honour and respect the memory of all the servicemen and women, and civilians, worldwide, who've lost their lives in conflict - but that I deplore the fact that they had to do so.

And for the same reason, through the year, I wear a white dove badge on my coat.

Because "I will never know how men can see the wisdom in a war". - Chris de Burgh