Back on track!!

Well, after an un-scheduled week off I am back.... New kitchen caused no end of bother, lack of electricity when I needed to be working being one of them. All good now though, just can't stop cooking!

I have had a fruitful morning though, finishing off the website I have designed for a local client who breed race horses. Looking good if I do say so myself...

Now I am trying to find a decent Content Management System I can adapt it to and host the website, bit boring but only have to do do this research once hopefully.

So any suggestions will be much appreciated.

So it seems Twitter is more powerful than I realised...

I was truly surprised to discover that within an hour of posting a negative comment about Moben Kitchens yesterday, they started following me on Twitter. It makes you realise the power of the Internet, co-incidentally soon after that I received a call from the Customer Services Manager telling me there was a fitter available to come straight away. It does make you wonder!!

or maybe I am being unfair and they do have a conscience after all!!

Time to rant, what has happened to good customer service?

Well... to cut a long story short, I decided to order a Moben kitchen, after 3 years of agonising over what company to go with. It was booked in to be fitted Monday (14th) and as discussed with Moben I had the kitchen gutted, replastered, rewired etc last week.

So it gets to Monday morning, 9.15, I start to wonder where they are so call customer services. After 10 minutes on hold I get through to someone who says that it has been re-scheduled for Wednesday and I should have been told. I assured her I hadn't been told and asked her to re-assure me that it would still be done by friday, she said she would call the fitter and call me straight back.

By 4pm on Monday I am still waiting, I call back and speak to someone else who says that they cant get hold of fitter but puts me on hold and "apparently" has a very dis-jointed call with the fitter as he has bad signal but they felt they could get it done in 3 days. Not ideal but I thought the problem had been resolved.

I returned home yesterday to discover an answer phone message from another person at Moben saying that the fitting had been re-scheduled to Monday, hope that is ok????????

As it was too late to call last night I called this morning, spoke to a lovely lady who understood the problem and would get the manager to call me urgently, that was an hour ago!!!

I understand that things go wrong but really it is up to the customer service staff to bend over backwards for the customer to make their experience as painless as possible. Needless to say I will be asking for compensation etc from Moben due to these hiccups, Microwave meals are getting a bit tiresome. But my main point of concern is the lack of care, I do hope not all large companies aren't going this way!!!

Are we all too grown up for charity antics!

It got me thinking this morning as I dropped my daughter off at Pre-School wearing her Pyjama's and paying £2 for Comic Relief that the business world don't seem to be participating as much as they used to in charity fundraising.

It seems to me that when the economy is a bit difficult we forget about charity and having fun and it is work, work, work! Seeing my daughters teachers dressed as a rabbit and a clown put things in to perspective. Why aren't we all doing this.

Going on Linked in, Facebook and Twitter today I saw no mention of charity fundraising, how better than to get your company noticed than through doing a good deed. So I have decided, I will be doing something silly to raise money this year, not sure what yet but I will let my 2 year old be my inspiration, I hope you do to!!

Work Life Balance

I have been thinking a lot recently about work life balance. How do you do it? If I put everything into my business then my home life will suffer and vice versa. I think I have come up with the Solution. If you do something you love then it doesn't feel like work, it becomes part of life.

I have found myself recently sitting down of an evening after putting my daughter to bed and I will quite happily open up my laptop and do some work, whether it is studying for my qualification, writing a blog post or searching Linked in, I am happy to do it.

So the answer (according to me) is make your work your life and then you don't need to find a balance, it'll just fit!

My first blog!!!

Hi there,

Haven't done this for a while, whilst I was regularly updating the blog at my previous company this is the first time I get to write about me and my new adventure.

So to cut a long story short after over 5 years working in the Marketing Recruitment industry I decided to embrace my passion of marketing and move solely into becoming a Marketing Consultant.

The past 4 months have been spent doing a Dreamweaver qualification, which should have taken 6 months but I managed it in 3, with straight A's, get me!! Also I have been building my own brand "The Marketing Hut", the name came quite simply. I have a hut in my garden, which I am slowly turning into an office, so the slogan "The full Marketing Mix under one roof..." twinned with a hut logo seemed to fit the bill.

Being a full-time single mum I needed to find a job that I love, am passionate about, fits around my daughter and pays the bills and I think I may have just found it.