Silver Cross, known for its prams and pushchairs, has been awarded a Feefo Platinum Trusted Service award. 

Customer service has always been important – perhaps now more than ever as it’s that bit harder to interact with customers during lockdown. We caught up with Riccardo Baldoni (pictured below), Head of IT and Customer Experience, to find out how they did it and what it means to him and his team.

Tell us a bit about you and your brand…

I have been at Silver Cross for over 16 years now, so man and boy! I started as Sales Admin and now have the pleasure of running our exceptional Customer Service Team as Head of IT & Customer Experience.

You’ve recently received a Feefo Platinum Trusted Service Award. How do the awards work?

The Platinum Trusted Service Award is achieved by us hitting Gold status for three consecutive years and to achieve Gold you need a minimum service rating of 4.5 out of 5.0, from at least 50 reviews. The service rating is given by our customers and we invite all feedback including the good, the bad and the ugly, so to achieve this recognition makes it very special.

What does your team do that makes them stand out?

The team continually go above and beyond for our customer and we always aim to turn a negative situation into a positive one by whatever means we can. I also think the fact that they really do care about our customers and the brand reputation, means that the level of service they offer is always to the highest standard. All our customers receive the same level of service no matter where their journey began, if the customer purchased via a retailer we still class them as our customer.

How do they feel about the award?

They are all incredibly proud of the award and the fact that it is based on independent customer feedback makes it mean even more. I can tell them how great they all are but this proves it! And it makes it all the more special that they achieved this during a very difficult year.

How have you adapted to working under lockdown?

It has been a very challenging time over the various lockdowns, however they have taken everything in their stride. Adapting to working from home was never going to be easy but they did it without complaint and continued to offer an exceptional level of service. We changed the way we worked due to our phone system being off and the majority of enquiries were through email or our website but there was no impact on service levels and they continued to hit all KPIs which was very impressive.

How have you helped to keep your colleagues motivated through the last 12 months?

Just through positive reinforcement of what an amazing job they do.

As we know, Customer Service really isn’t easy, and to deal with the numbers of enquiries that they do on a daily basis is phenomenal. We have set KPIs for the year which I think really helps them to have something to focus on and a goal to be motivated to hit. Microsoft Teams has been a great tool that we started to use through Lockdown 1.0. It enabled us all to keep in touch and still feel part of the team, as isolation could’ve been an issue.  I continue to bore them with pictures of my cooking exploits, vain attempts at arty photograph and my exceptional Christmas light display!

What exciting plans do you have for the year ahead into 2021

We have some really exciting plans for the future and for improving our customer experience offering even further. We are looking to introduce Live Chat on our Silver Cross site (we already have this on Micralite) as well implementing the option for WhatsApp. We just want to make it as easy as possible for our customers to contact us.

We are also going to be improving the post-purchase experience for customers who order directly from our site, meaning that they have more information available to them, again improving the whole customer journey and experience.

For more information about Silver Cross

For further information, visit their website or email Silver Cross or Micralite