The previous owner emphasised to me that this business like many service industries is built on customers' trust. That was how he operated in the 22 years that he ran the business. I worked for him for five years and during that time I saw that some of our competitors abused that trust. They took advantage of the average customer's lack of knowledge of their legal obligations when it comes to Work Health and Safety and overstocked kits with items that had a bigger profit margin rather than what was required. This was especially the case with reps that were working on a commission. Most are in this industry. I was.
My belief is that if you stay honest and ethical, customers will reward you with loyalty. So when I bought the business, I put everyone on wages so that there would be no temptation to cheat the customer.
Customers also trust our expertise - so we had better be the experts! We pride ourselves in keeping up-to-the-minute with latest legislation, standards, and codes of practice related to workplace health and safety. We are able to cite the documentation to prove why we do things the way we do.
We are not a big business but we are big on ethics. Our on-the-road WHS advisors, Ron Kemp and Josh Booth, have both been with us for over five years now. I would trust these men with my life! They also see that it is our integrity that wins customer loyalty as much as our expertise and experience.
That's not to say that we didn't make mistakes, we did, but have learnt from them. One of those mistakes was having a "one size fits all" policy when it comes to restocking. We have learnt that there are basically three types of customers and our service option plans now reflect that.