Late last year, at a business awards ceremony, I first met Simon Calver, CEO of Lovefilm, the UK's leading on-line film & games rental company. Simon has driven impressive growth for the firm and it became clear A) he was a really nice guy and B) put his customers first. As we do exactly that at King of Shaves too, when we met again in 2009 (at another awards ceremony, which we were delighted to win) I was interested to hear of his plans for a 'Consumer Forum' - a group of entrepreneurially minded, customer-centric companies, which put the consumer first. His idea was to get together a group of companies, and launch the Forum, which is dedicated to not being 'confrontational' with consumers, but rather, practice 'best practice'. Given we serve up millions of shaves each day, each which must be the 'King' of shaves, I was more than happy to sign up KoS for the forum, along with other like-minded companies such as Ella's Kitchen, Photobox.com, Chemist Direct and A Suit That Fits (a company I talk about in my book on 'How to Grow a Great business in Tough Times'.
The forum launched today - you can visit it here, see our press release on it here and see early Marketing Week press coverage here.
Nicky Springle (who heads up customer care & interaction for me at King of Shaves) and I will post regularly, with examples of how King of Shaves puts customer care & satisfaction at the heart of what it does, which I hope people find useful.
Well done Simon, for getting The Consumer Forum off the ground, and here's to signing up many more likeminded members.
People who are interested in what TCF is up to can follow us via twitter here which is administered by Surinder Gill.
