Lost and found

Thanks to an amazing joint effort involving the customer experience escalation team in Doxford, Sunderland and the National Returns Centre (NRC) in Belfast, one very grateful customer can now breathe easy, while a certain very famous face can remain happily none the wiser.

When advanced customer advisor, Carole Bell from Doxford Contact Centre, took a call from a fashion designer, who was distraught over the apparent loss of three of her designs, she was intrigued.

Carole’s interest was further piqued when she discovered that the designer in question had sent the two missing coats and one dress to a certain widely known residence, as the designs had been commissioned for her client to have a look at.

After the wares had been sampled, a member of the client’s staff was instructed to return them to the designer for alterations. The precious package was then taken to the Post Office and sent back to the designer by Royal Mail Signed For…except it never arrived.

‘Obviously the designer didn’t want to tell her client what had happened, so she came straight to us for help,’ said Carole. ‘The clothes were worth around £5,500, so you can imagine how upsetting this was as the parcel was only covered for £50 loss!

‘I got in touch with the team at NRC to ask about the missing items, but they hadn’t seen them. I then went to our high-profile team, who contact Operations within the network. I also contacted the flagship advisors, who are in the Post Office help team, as the only tracking we had on the item was from the handover to the Post Office.

‘Post sent with our Signed For service isn’t trackable, so it’s very hard to locate such mail within our network. However, a couple of days later, I was contacted by Louise Bodles from the NRC, who said the items had arrived, but without their packaging.’

NRC administrator, Louise Bodles, said: ‘When Carole sent me photos of the designs to help us identify them, I circulated the pictures around the relevant staff and they were recognised by my colleague Tim McLoughlin, who remembered seeing the clothes and was able to go and retrieve them.

‘I was really delighted and relieved to be able to return the items to the designer. This is an example of the daily work we do at the NRC where customer satisfaction is our key aim.’

‘I was so happy that we had located the designs for the customer as I know how worried she was, and also, how important the publicity would be for her business when a certain someone finally wears the items she had chosen,’ said Carole.

‘Naturally, the designer was absolutely ecstatic when I told her the missing items had been found. She was crying on the phone. She had really lost hope of ever seeing them again.’