New Aston Martin Routemaster Bus for London?

News today of the two finalists for the new routemaster bus which may well be on the road by 2011!!

As an iconic symbol of London we think either design would be a fab replacement for the tired, old classic Routemaster. But for us the winner is the The Aston Martin/Foster bus.

The design envisages a highly-manoeuvrable, zero-emissions vehicle, with drive-by-wire, solar panels built into a glass roof, a vehicle accessible for all, with warm lighting and wooden floors....and we hope no space for graffiti or chewing gum on the seats either!

Economy Is F****d, Says Branson

We love Sir Richard Branson. Not just because he is a straight-talking, high performing business leader who understands the importance of customer service and brand value but for the fact that he says what most dont have the balls to say.

The entrepreneur described to Sky News today the current downturn as "a terrible, terrible mess" and blamed "some very irresponsible people in the banking community" and "lax regulation".
"I was going to say, it's f****d, but I think I had better not have said that," Sir Richard told Sky News. "I think it is a terrible, terrible mess, which has been brought upon us by some very irresponsible people in the banking community, some very lax regulation and we are going to have to work hard to dig ourselves out of it".

Full marks to Sir Richard - and his PR aide who added "He's only saying what everyone's thinking, in a more forthright way." - too right and about bloody time someone did!

Darling, are you stupid?!

Since when did any shopper get excited by a whopping 2.5% discount? Why is cutting VAT such a big deal...?

1. It is NOT a 2.5% reduction it is a 2.5% reduction from the mark up price - try it - £100 + 15% vat is £115 vs £117.50 if it was 17.5%. If you take 2.5% OFF £117.50 it would be £114.56 - sounds a small difference on £100 but it mounts up!

2. He is raising duty on Fuel, Tobacco and Alcohol - so what he taketh with one hand....

3. The average Joe the Plumber (to use McCain speak!) doesn't pay VAT on most things - food, kids clothes etc are exempt, Gas and Electricity fall into a separate VAT band not affected by the change, Fuel will be adjusted to compensate, as will the other sins of drink and fags...so what exactly is the Chancellor suggesting??? It would seem his solution is to get us all to go out and spend more of the money we can't borrow and don't have to help him in his (our) borrowing nationally?!

4. We'll get clobbered later on with higher (hidden and otherwise) taxes.

5. The work involved in reseting systems, tills, price tickets is massive (only to be reversed in 13 months time!) and how many savings will really be seen - especially at a time when raw materials prices and costs of goods continue to out-strip the 2.5% off!

6. Businesses claim back VAT anyway so it makes no difference to them and they wont be encouraged by any such saving - and as for a Corporation Tax change - it only helps if you make money Mr Darling!

All in all, it seems like a load of spin and piffle to me. What do you think...share your thoughts here....

Customer (lack of) Service

Why do companies bother to have a customer service department if they dont want to return calls or emails when customers get in contact.

We dont want voicemails, long holding times and an idiot who seems to care more about his next tea break than our issue...we want to be heard, understood and made happy. After all, if a customer takes the time to actually tell you what went wrong the company is getting a second chance and a useful bit of feedback....so a small suggest from us would be USE IT.

Here at UOE we dont use voicemail, automated button pressing or off-shore call centres, we use experts who understand the importance of your business and survey a cross-section of our clients every 90 days to ask them how we are doing...so what is so hard about that we wonder and why do so few other companies seem to follow our lead.

Have you had a bad experience with another company why not share it here....nothing beats a good rant.

Feedback is important

At UOE we love our customers telling us what they think. The good the bad and everything in between - that's why we do 90-day surveys with a random selection of our clients as well as have feedback pages on our website too (we're also planning some on-line community pages where the most popular questions and comments will be posted). It's only by our clients (and suppliers) telling us what we do right and wrong that we can be the best we can.

So: on the topic of feedback we thought this was some of the best/amusing feedback we'd read for a while.

It come from UPS (the global courier):
After every flight, UPS pilots fill out a form, called a 'gripe sheet,' which tells mechanics about problems with the aircraft. The mechanics corrects the problems, document their repairs on the form, and then pilots review the gripe sheets before the next flight.Never let it be said that ground crews lack a sense of humour. Here are some actual maintenance complaints submitted by UPS pilots (marked with a P) and the solutions recorded (marked with an S) by maintenance engineers.By the way,UPS is the only Major airline that has never, Ever, had an accident. So I guess feedback works!

P: Left inside main tire almost needs replacement.
S: Almost replaced left inside main tire.

P: Test flight OK, except auto-land very rough.
S: Auto-land not installed on this aircraft.

P: Something loose in cockpit
S: Something tightened in cockpit

P: Dead bugs on windshield.
S: Live bugs on back-order.

P: Autopilot in altitude-hold mode produces a 200 feet per minute descent
S: Cannot reproduce problem on ground.

P: Evidence of leak on right main landing gear.
S: Evidence removed.

P: DME volume unbelievably loud.
S: DME volume set to more believable level.

P: Friction locks cause throttle levers to stick.
S: That's what friction locks are for.

P: IFF inoperative in OFF mode.
S: IFF always inoperative in OFF mode.

P: Suspected crack in windshield.
S: Suspect you're right.

P: Number 3 engine missing.
S: Engine found on right wing after brief search

P:Target radar hums.
S: Reprogrammed target radar with lyrics.

P: Noise coming from under instrument panel. Sounds like a midget pounding on something with a hammer.
S: Took hammer away from the midget.

Things you should never put on a job application?

This week we've been recruiting some extra staff for our retail store and some of the statements on the CVs , application forms and in interviews have been absolutely hilarious.

Whilst Alan Sugar on The Apprentice last season may have been slammed for selecting a winner who lied on his CV, there's surely no fear with the following (too honest?) candidates: (we're hiding the names - it's only fair!):

In the section on courses and qualifications wrote: GCSE's were not taken due to fear of failing.

In the section on why did you chose your last job: it was not what I had in mind because of all the jobs i really wanted were all taken

In the section on attendance/lateness: I was only late once, because I was not sure about the location of the store. (we're hoping this wasnt after the first day!!)

In the section on other interests: I truly am interested in anything at all

We love the honesty and so, yes we will be interviewing the candidate because you can teach skills but you can't teach honesty or attitude.

Copy that!

The 'Xerox' process celebrated its 70th birthday yesterday.

Xerography, the invention that made it possible for people to create and share information with trillions of copies and laser prints first began when a copy was made on October 22 1938, in a makeshift laboratory behind a beauty parlour in Astoria, Queens, a borough in New York City.

The copy, preserved in the Smithsonian Institution, reads “10-22-38 ASTORIA.” The inventor, Chester Carlson, was a scientist and patent attorney who was determined to find a simple way to make copies of documents. Were he still alive, Carlson might well be surprised to learn his invention uncorked an information revolution that has continued to this day, making information readily available and expanding the world’s total knowledge.

Infotrends, an independent industry consultancy, estimates that 3.08 trillion copies and prints were made around the world this year on products fathered by Carlson’s invention.

Around the world many people still refer to making a copy as 'Xeroxing' so Mr Carlson, for being personally responsible for creating the market for more than 40% of our annual sales we at UOE salute and thank you!

The drink of experts?

So you probably already know we sell catering stuff - bottled water, coke, loo-roll, kitkats and heap of yummy biscuits etc etc ...but recently we've had great fun playing on a little website we found called Soft Drink Can Generator

At the site, you can create your very own can with your own tag-line, logo etc etc... so here - for a bit of fun - are two products we reckon won't be worrying Coca-Cola or any of the other brands.

Seeing things a different way?!

Here at UOE we're all about looking at things differently...but when one of our team was travelling along the M4 motorway recently and encountered a Range Rover on its side and a boat across the motorway, even he thought things were a bit unusual!


Happily everyone in the car was ok..although the boat might not be too good on water anymore and we're told the car is ok so long as you dont want to turn left or want to open the doors!!

Guinness Book of Records - Biggest Ballpoint Pen!

This year's Guinness Book of Records includes the listing of Olf Fujner as the maker of the worlds biggest ballpoint pen...we're hoping it doesnt come packed in 12's!!!

For the love of Boris

So Boris Johnson Mayor of London was handled the Olympic flag this week in the closing ceremony at the Beijing Olympics but please, please, please can someone please give him a suit that fits. Oh and whilst we're at it...Mr Brown - you can sort it out too...

We love Boris' attitude and go get-em style but a great city needs an leader that looks the part...you never see President Sarkozy dressed like that!

I'd also recommend perhaps a regular read of our fellow blogger: http://asuitablewardrobe.dynend.com/

When they chant your name...

Jamie in our Account Management Team stumbled across this amusing footage on youtube today ...it's not everyday you find a crowd at a live gig chanting your company's name but...here it is!!!

Out of office

Welcome to a blog about the cool, the amusing and the latest in trend and fashion in the office. Who are we to decide on what ranks as cool ...well good point, so we'll welcome your comments on whether we get it right or wrong...but the bloggers of this post are office products experts and we all know that experts are ALWAYS right :-)

For years the "out of office" message has been purely a matter of fact and formal in style - and that was if you remembered to switch it on when you left and off when you got back!

But in this era of all consuming brand style, companies and individuals are often going for an out of office message that are 'on-brand' than the usual "i'm out until X"

So next time you set your out of office why not stop and think if perhaps this one might fit your style...

Thank you for your email - I am out for the next week in Asia but working - I may take a little longer to keep up with responses due to meetings.
Should you need me urgently please feel free to call Daniella Smith - she is far more capable than I am.

Where the Hell is Matt?

The video below is totally inspiring. Just watch it all the way to the end - and you need speakers because the music that makes you smile...

Stride Gum in the US sponsored Matt's trip around the globe - and whatever they paid it was worth it in viral marketing value - it is getting about 1.6m viewings each week on the net for the past 4 weeks!!!


Where the Hell is Matt? (2008) from Matthew Harding on Vimeo.

Chaos in the print shop

We just love this little video on youtube by Clustarack.com. Clustarack provide specialised wide format roll holding racks (which we can happily sell you!) and the video is what happens (perhaps!) if you don't stack rolls properly.



By the way, the video took 98 takes to get the stunt right! Well done guys. We love it!

Hitting the spot - how far we'd go to help our clients!?

Here at UOE we're known for going the extra mile for our clients...so when Caroline Cusworth, Business Development Director was asked by one of her clients if she'd be interested in trying out one of their new services it seemed only natural to say "yes!"

The client in question? - a Doctor in London's renowned Harley Street - specialising in cosmetic surgery - nothing unusual there you think....until you find out that they specialise in.... G-Spot enhancement (if you don't believe us: http://www.profdartey.com/) or what is commonly referred to as the G-Shot!

The offer to be the first to have this new treatment in the UK was enough for Caroline to jump at the chance..."helping a client at the same time was nice too!" says Caroline...although we reckon she probably enjoyed her side of the bargain a bit more!

I guess now we really can say we will do anything with/for our clients....!

19% of staff steal office supplies

Nearly one in five (19 percent) workers report they have taken office supplies for personal use in the past year, according to a recent Spherion Workplace Snapshot survey. Of those who admitted to stealing office supplies, 21 percent felt guilty or regretted the act. In 2006, a similar Spherion survey found that 18 percent of workers reported they had taken office supplies for personal use.

Workers said the primary reason office supplies were taken for personal use was because they needed them (41 percent). Nearly one-third (32 percent) said it was because their boss/office manager said it was alright to do so, and 15 percent claimed the company will never miss them.

The most common types of items taken by workers were pens, pencils or rulers (25 percent) and paper, post-its or file folders (19 percent).

Of the age groups surveyed, younger workers (25 percent between the ages of 18-24 and 29 percent between 25 and 29 years old) were the most likely to have taken office supplies for personal use, while workers aged 65 and older were the least likely (nine percent) to have taken such items for personal use. Further, older workers feel it is wrong to take office supplies for personal use more so than any other age group, with 83 percent saying so.

Further research by UOE found that much of this theft is as a result of open access to stocks in on-site cabinets and cupboards. It was found that when online purchasing by the user replaced bulk general stocking of goods theft was reduced (as was per head expenditure) as over 75% of workers said they were conscious that their boss could see what they were ordering and would spot any over-ordering more easily.

Press 1 to report a crime - invalid entry - goodbye.

Just when you thought every possible organisation that could employ automated call-handling had done it...Thursday's London Metro newspaper reported that Police in the UK are considering a 'dial-a-crime' telephone service.

The metro reported: "Call centre-style automated phone systems with numbered menus should be brought in for victims to report crimes, police have been told.
The 'dial-a-crime' service would save money and ease pressure on police control room staff, an official report suggested.
It should be coupled with other 'self-service channels', such as internet sites with online forms, for users to give details of minor offences or report anti-social behaviour. "

I assume it won't be long before an offshore call-centre is handling our 999 service and will ask us to hold whilst he gives us a log-number to report a crime!

The benefits of online reporting and the like for minor (so-called petty) crime makes sense (although the mere fact that it just goes in a database presupposes the thought that at some time someone, somewhere will actually be accessing and using the information to actually solve a crime rather than just run a report for a statistical analysis.

In a time when the fear of crime is rising, it seems crazy that what little interaction between police and the public is to be eroded by unwanted solutions such as automated call-handling.

The idea was put forward by the Home Office-funded National Policing Improvement Agency on the basis that 'Well automated self-service interactions can cost as little as 15 per cent of costs, when compared to the costs of interacting with a live agent.' ....Well forgive me, but i quite like the idea of SPEAKING TO THE POLICE rather than leaving a voicemail!

As for the failed ASBO solution to cut anti-social behaviour, I suppose this would mean that the automated system could just send a text message ASBO to the trouble-maker....yep, that'll really save some cost....and probably be as effective as the current solution.

Loo-nar Mission

This week NASA launched a Loo-nar mission - to fix the toilet on board the International Space Station!

It begs the question why there is only one toilet on the entire station...surely a lack of planning(!) but also the extreme levels of adaptability that the astronauts on-board are required to handle. Plumbing, space research, quantum physics - is there nothing these guys and girls can't do?

NASA has since confirmed that the toilet is now back in action - so again another out of this world experience - a plumbing job that got fixed on time, first time....I guess you get what you pay for...although that has got to be the most expensive call-out charge any plumber has ever made!

Swivel Chair Racing

Here at UOE we sell swivel chairs, management chairs, visitors chairs, boardroom chairs, stacking chairs, polyprop chairs in fact a chair for pretty much every ocassion..but we've never been asked to provide an office chair you could win a race in...

But, that's not the case elsewhere...in Germany this week the first swivel chair derby took place - and to say the wrong sort of chair can cause back-pain would be an understatement! Check out the photos and video (and dont try this at home!)

What would the risk-assessment chaps say about this one....we cant wait to read the accident book. By the way, any damage caused we think would count as mis-use and probably not be covered by your warranty! Enjoy. We did. :-)

Teaching you to breathe!

We sell IT stuff and so our experiences of less than computer-literate customers is as wide as most but it baffles me to think that any company can seriously feel the need to treat its customers as totally stupid?

I am fascinated with the daftness of the instruction manual from Doro (a well respected DECT phone manufacturer - whose products we sell) for their latest NeoBio 40/45r telephones.

Its instructions for receiving a phone call begin with:

1. Wait for the handset to ring

Well obviously the phone needs to ring for you to want to answer it.... should we start telling customers to breathe in and out to prevent loss of consciousness too? I am all for guiding customers through the confusion of a new piece of technology but come on let's give our customers some credit! Please.

It's this kind of silliness that leads to many customers claiming they just can't get along with instruction manuals!

Disagree? Please post your comments...

Foolproof or a Proof Fool?

These days we're all expected to be experts at stuff we have no training in. The skill of proof-reading is exactly that - a skill and yet it falls often to the least busy staff member, an intern or just gets left till just the very last minute. Proof reading is like cold-calling - everyone can use the telephone but few can make a living from it!

Checking proofs of printed materials is vital to the presentation and professionalism with which companies are judged. The chatty, personal style of a business is one thing, but get the spelling wrong and that trust, reliability and professionalism vanishes faster than you can misspell the word "received"!

UOE's Ten Tips to Proof Reading:
1. It is twice as hard to proof read your own work than someone else's - this is partly because you think you know how to spell things when you don't but also because you will have a tendency to skim the text as your mind knows what you wrote and what comes next! No, really!! So by choice get someone else to proof your work for you too.

2. Cultivate a healthy sense of doubt. If there are types of errors you know you tend to make, double check for those.

3. Read very slowly. If possible, read out loud. Read one word at a time.

4.Read what is actually on the page, not what you think is there. (This is the most difficult sub-skill to acquire, particularly if you wrote what you are reading).

5. Proofread more than once and not straight after you've written the work.

6. Check the photos too - has an image been reversed (classic shots when the text on a shirt is back-to-front)

7. Take an overview look at the whole page - is the layout correct? Are the colours what you expected? Do the fonts match? Do the headlines make sense and are they spelled correctly!

8. Try reading for spelling backwards - this forces you to read each word out of context and stops your mind wandering.

9. Never assume that the studio that did the artwork have a clue how to spell your company name, boss' name, how to format a telephone number or a postcode. Assume everything will be wrong and work on that basis.

10. Keep a copy of the amendments you have made so you can double check them first on the next proof - don't assume the studio will get the amendments correct!

In proof reading, you can take nothing for granted, because unconscious mistakes are so easy to make. It helps to read out loud, because you are using two senses. It is often possible to hear a mistake, such as an omitted or repeated word that you have not seen.

Remember, professional editors proofread as many as ten times. Publishing houses hire teams of readers to work in pairs, out loud. And still errors occur! So you are warned!


Here's a classic example:
Great 48 page brochure, lovely photo, correctly mailed to the right contact but....look at the typo on the cover. "the very lastest in outdoor lighting" - whoops...surely that should read "latest"

There are no traffic jams on the extra mile

We just love the story reported by sky news about the New York Cabbie who took an elderly couple on the longest taxi ride in the city's history...

Douglas Guldeniz drove the pair from Queens, New York, to their retirement home in Arizona. A total of 2,500 miles. The meter ticked up a whopping bill of £1,500. It isn't known if he got a tip!

But what we do know is that he - along with 60 other drivers in the city - were rewarded with New York Taxi and Limousine Commission's 'Going the Extra Mile' award. We love the idea that a customer service focused organisation stopped and rewarded its staff for going above and beyond the call of duty... Good work guys!

It sure beats the 12 mile rule for London cabbies that Transport for London require!

Terminal Illness

We've all had that feeling - you know the harder you try the worse it gets! Well that seems to be afflicting BA and the launch of its new facility at Heathrow. Try as they might the world seems to be conspiring against them to actually get the benefits of the "super-advanced" Terminal 5.

You would have thought seeing as they could chose the time and date of the launch they'd have tested to destruction the baggage management software and hardware BEFORE inflicting it upon their paying customers! For sure, it will go down in history not only as one of the all time PR disasters but also a text-book case of how not to communicate and treat your clients in the face of critical systems failures.

As an regular BA traveller I'm not looking to burn my executive club card and membership, but having just booked some flights for late May 2008 I am beginning to wonder whether they'll have sorted it out by then!!

To top it all, it would seem the new super-flash car-park management system at Terminal 5 also has a bit of a serious flaw - as broadcast on BBC1's Watchdog programme this week - it tells you you've parked your car in a different space to the one you actually did(!)

Granted this only happens if you fail to follow the signs the computer puts on the ceiling indicators as your car moves through the car-park...but I'm sure I'm not the only one who ignores these type of car-park signs...after all someone else might get that really good space before me!! They really should have tested it with REAL people, not programmers!

How can it be that as the flagship of BA and BAA respectively the launch of Terminal 5 could be allowed to suffer such silly and fundamental process failures? Were they not properly checked? Sadly it is quite the norm to see the launch of a technologically complex project which despite being "tested" is woefully inadequate for the purpose at launch.

As a business, UOE has spent 18 months developing its latest Dragonfly online order system. The new site is fantastic, delivers a heap of extra benefits to clients and is super-fast but if we had launched it back in November 2007 as we originally planned, well it would have been a terminal 5 fiasco. We bit the bullet, swallowed our pride and worked even harder to make sure when we did roll it out, clients got what they wanted - a good first time experience that (hopefully) makes then feel more inclined to use us rather than avoid us! Making the delay was a tough decision, but we knew we'd be letting ourselves down if we didn't.

Now UOE is rolling out the Dragonfly technology over the next 90 days to all of its clients. The feedback so far has been excellent...so fingers crossed we not made any of the silly mistakes of our airline colleagues!!

Call Centres

There is nothing worse than a so-called customer service centre that puts you through those really annoying button pressing systems, then repeats the same "calls may be recorded" nonsense about 3 times, then tells you to hold (for what seems like forever) then when you get through some muppet at the end of the line tells you his/her computer system is down and can YOU call back! This delightful experience - which sadly seems commonplace these days - was today courtesy of our 'friends' at Transport for London.

This fabulous service was topped off by me calling back and having the phone hung up by some incoherent telephonist who just said "sorry really busy at the moment can you call back" - what, AGAIN?!

Why do so many call centres think that we want to press loads of buttons - hands up if you do?
Why do so many companies think we want to call THEM back - they're busy? Why not offer to call ME back?
Why do companies think giving me a issue reference number is sufficient to get me off the phone! I want REAL, good old fashioned help. With people who care, understand and are empowered to make a difference...not some buck-passing call-centre chicken who doesn't get the idea of customer service!

To Insure Prompt Service

So this is our first blog and to give you the flavour of what we'll be discussing it will be the good the bad and the downright awful service that we encounter in our daily life and the interactions with companies and people we suffer and delight in.

I think great service should be standard in this 21st Century, high-speed, low-tolerance world but it would seem not everyone is on the same page! Bad customer service just isn't right, shouldn't be accepted and deserves to be discussed, debated and ditched.

So lets begin...Why do so my restaurants automatically add a 15% tip these days to your bill? They say it is to prevent the Inland Revenue chasing the restaurant owner for the taxes on the tips the staff pocket...but is it really just to promise the staff some extra money from us rather than pay them a decent hourly wage? Regardless of the service they give? I'm all for tipping - after all TIPS are supposed "To Insure Prompt Service - TIPS" not just to line pockets of the slowest waiter the world has EVER seen!! So join me in doubling your tip when the service is great and not being shy to ask it to be removed by the surly, unfriendly and downright rude guy or girl who just ruined your night out.