Companion invites grandparents to work

With the nation debating the benefits of this week’s Bring Your Dog To Work Day (Friday 23 June #bydtwd) Leeds-based Companion Stairlifts welcomed its own special guests when it hosted a Bring Your Grandparents To Work Day last Thursday (15 June).

Companion provides home adaptations such as stairlifts and accessible bathrooms to customers across the UK. With many of their customers in the 70+ age bracket, Companion felt grandparents of its team would be able to offer valuable opinions and advice about the way the company handles communications ranging from telephone enquiries to websites and brochures.

Companion managing director Clare Brophy explained: “As a company that cares about our customers and what they think of the way we do business, we thought it would be helpful to get the views of some older people on our marketing and communications activities.

“Once we introduced the idea of a Bring Your Grandparents to Work Day our team really got behind it, inviting their relatives to spend some time with us. We had five grandparents join us for an afternoon, listening in to calls and then giving us their thoughts about our brochures and website. It was a fabulous day and lovely to meet our team’s extended family. Everyone thoroughly enjoyed it.”

Companion arranged for the grandparents to listen to calls dealing with enquiries about stairlifts and accessible bathroom adaptations as well as those to the customer service team.

Jean Birch from Yeadon, whose granddaughter Harriet Cooper works in the easy bathing sales team, said she was very impressed with the way the callers she listened to were treated by Tim Wilkinson in the stairlift sales team.

“The information was spot on. Tim seemed to know exactly what information to offer and really delighted one of the callers when he volunteered to make them an appointment for the next day.”

Keighley couple Peter and Margaret Calderwood’s granddaughter Joely Carr works in the new business development team. They both felt the Companion associates they listened to were courteous and knew just when to bring calls to an end without appearing too pushy.

“We’d be very happy to receive calls like these ourselves,” said Margaret.
Former business owners Betty and Keith Brewster from Shipley felt the day was much more interesting than they had expected. Their daughter Janine and granddaughter Danielle Broadbent both work for Companion, so they were particularly interested to visit their workplace.

“All the customers I listened to were lovely,” said Keith. “We used to run a business so we know just how important it is to make people feel as though they are being listened to and kept up to date with what is happening. Everything we’ve seen today has been fantastic.”

Clare added: “We’re very grateful to all our grandparents for taking the time to give us their opinions and some good ideas which we’ll be looking at in more depth. It was lovely watching them with the team, and we’re all absolutely thrilled that they gave us such positive feedback.”

For more images of our special Bring Your Grandparents To Work Day, why not like our Facebook page here.