We need you!

Obviously we need you, our customers, but more than that, we need your feedback to improve - whether you shop with us or not…

Our lovely office mate (when we were in the office that is) Jacqui Patton from Ink Blot Creative, does daily communications advice over on her instagram page, which is brilliant for small, medium and large businesses (and actually, since communications are intrinsic to all of our lives and work, worth a follow whatever your background), and a couple of days ago she was talking about mystery shoppers.

Once upon a time, long long ago, when my hair did not need chemical assistance to be the colour it is, and my metabolism allowed late night kebabs, I worked in hospitality and retail. The words MYSTERY SHOPPER filled us with both dread and excitement… would we be able to spot them? Would we do well?

The ones when I worked in a bar were the most savage. Described as 5’5 with an untidy blonde bob, I don’t know whether I took exception more to the 2inches that had been slashed from my height, or that my bob was untidy… I’ve a natural wave, they should try dealing with that on a busy Friday night in a heaving bar. Some people ‘shopped’ to pick holes, others to genuinely help you (and the business) to improve. Like all feedback you can usually ignore the very good and the very bad… it’s the middle stuff that is important. And that is where a mystery shopper should come in.

When I launched Harriet and Rose, I had a soft launch - a week when the website was ‘hidden’ behind a holding page so that friends could have a look, tell me about any clangers (spelling, product descriptions half done, products priced at zero, photos wrong etc). It was great, because everyone looked for something else… and everyone saw something that I had missed. You do miss stuff when you write pages of copy for a website. Sometimes links are ‘dead’ as you meant to put something there that you didn’t. You miss things when you look at something day in day out.

Having been trading for a year, I’ve now uploaded quite a lot of new products. I’ve shifted around quite a lot of pages. I’ve had a global pandemic mean I’ve had to adapt and change how things are delivered. Which means, they’ll be some things on the site that aren’t quite right. I’m going to be going over the website early next week (two kids back in school! I’ll just start the dancing now! And getting my to-do lists done! I’ll just get back into things and then it will be the summer holidays!). However much I look at the website, I know that there are things that you will see that I won’t. They’ll be a link I haven’t clicked on so I don’t know that it’s broken. There are products that you want to see, that you aren’t… and so I’m (bravely) asking for volunteers to ‘mystery’ shop the Harriet and Rose website.

Whether you are a regular customer, or someone who doesn’t know the website at all, I want to hear from you! Send me an email at info@harrietandrose.co.uk or send me a DM on Facebook. I will pick five of you at random (providing that many of you volunteer!), and send you over a few questions to think about while you go over the website. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour, and I’ll send you over a £10 voucher for the website as a thank you. I’m happy for constructive criticism, and if you think I’m doing something wrong, then please say so - I need feedback good and bad to make this website the best it can be!

I won’t be sharing your feedback with anyone - it’s just for me - but I will take onboard everything that is said, and seek to improve the website, the stock that I offer, and iron out any issues that I haven’t noticed! I know that there’s some improvements that I can make, and who better to help than you!