It's coming to the end of National Customer Service Week which seeks to raise awareness of customer service in the UK and the vital part it has to play in successful businesses.

At Safestore, we strive to provide excellent service to our customers from finding out about their storage needs and providing them with the best solution, through to helping them to move their belongings in and keeping them safe as though they were our own.

Customer service is not just about making the sale but about creating a lasting impression so that the manner in which a customer is dealt with stands out, and leads them to tell others about it. Our people are very important which is why Safestore is proud to be among the highest rated organisations on Feefo (the independent customer rating system for businesses that guarantees 100% genuine feedback) with 95% of customers rating their experience with us as excellent or good.

These days, customers leave feedback in various ways such as online reviews and on social media. Given the open nature of social media, it's increasingly important for organisations to review good and bad feedback in order to motivate staff and improve customer service with the aim of exceeding customer expectations.

Here at Safestore, we provide a service which, more often than not, caters to customers who are undertaking extremely stressful and emotional tasks, such as moving house, dealing with a bereavement or renovating a property.

Therefore, our store teams are not only tasked with providing practical and safe storage solutions, but as primarily a service business, we also aim to make the move in process as stress-free as possible. And this is why great customer service is paramount.

Great customer service for us means understanding our customers' needs and acting with speed, clarity and professionalism. The customer needs to feel valued and so we try to treat each customer as an individual according to their case. Examples of going above and beyond for our customers include helping an existing customer to change their storage room size, depending on how their situation has changed, or staying behind after closing time to enable a new customer to move in after a stressful day has caused them to arrive late.

Receiving great service can often be pleasantly surprising because as a customer we tend to expect an average service which is the norm. When someone takes the time to show an interest in us rather than just following a process, it's a great feeling. If someone truly listens to what we want and provides a solution that solves our problem, then they have won our trust and are very likely to win our business.

With this in mind, customer service is always at the heart of our business and not just for one week in October.

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