Are you equipped to handle customer complaints?
No matter what industry you’re in or how fantastic your services are, it’s practically inevitable for every business to run into a customer complaint. Whether it’s the result of an error on your side of the process or a particularly picky customer, there are certain dos and don’ts that every business owner and customer service representative should know. The question is, however, are you prepared to handle a customer complaint? What do you brush off and what do you take...
Watch – Naked woman spotted drunkenly dancing around a war memorial
The mystery nude was seen shouting at a group of young men before stripping off and cavorting around the memorial and street. Liam Rogan, 22, filmed the lairy luvvie at the war memorial in Sheerness, Kent, just after 8pm on Sunday. The next day marked the surrender of Nazi Germany and its allies ending the war in Europe. The kiosk worker, who lives in Sheerness, said: "I was waiting for my mum to pick me up from my girlfriend's house...
Nearly £1 trillion inheritance money expected pass to the next generation in a decade
The ‘inheritance economy’ is set to boom over the next ten years as rising wealth and higher mortality rates combine to raise the total value of inheritances to £1 trillion over the next decade. The total annual amounts passing from one generation to the next are forecast to rise from the current level of £69 billion to around £115 billion by 2027, according to a ground-breaking report from estate administration specialists Kings Court Trust. This 66 per cent increase in...
Novotel: The lost soul of the British cityscape
Amongst an ever diversifying spectrum of accommodation options it's difficult to know where hotel brands such as Accor's Novotel fit in. I remember when I got my first bar job there some 12 years ago getting a sense of unease about what the future held for the chain. Five or so big hospitality outlets were due to be opened that year which threatened to reduce their share of the hospitality pie and many offered either new concepts or a distinct product...
Escape to: Bristol
On a recent visit through San Fransisco's notorious hippie capital Haight-Ashbury The Guardian's Rory Carroll noted that the spirit of the Beat poets and flower children who gathered there to create a new paradigm of sharing and community has become an illusion. The bohemian idyll of Allen Ginsberg, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters no longer exists, replaced by a gentrified tech-loving media landscape. Peace, love and credit cards, it seems. But not all is lost - Britain has its own 'counter-culture counter-option'...
Watch – Moment bystanders LIFT a car off a school boy
This is the heroic moment passers-by rushed to help a seven-year-old boy who had been mown down by an out-of-control car - by LIFTING it off him. Remarkable footage shows around 15 people heaving the two tonne Mercedes A Class off the youngster, before hauling him to safety. The boy was involved in a collision at around 8.40pm on Sunday (7/5) on St Peter's Road in the Highfields area of Leicester. Police and paramedics dashed to the scene and the...
Glamping just five minutes north of the Jubilee and Northern Lines
Edgware and Stanmore are destinations that are as synonymous with tube station notice boards as please mind the gap signs are to underground station platforms - and they could also be your gateway to country living this summer. As the nights get longer and the weather becomes increasingly bearable Londoners across the city are starting to gather their plans for spending more time outdoors as soon as the clock strikes five. Once the preserve of long weekends away Glamping is...
This is why we cannot afford not to vote in this General Election
Four years ago, I saw four young men going through the bins on the estate by my office, looking for food. I was staggered to discover that they all had jobs, but had only just started work and had to wait 5 weeks for their first pay cheques. After being on benefits for some time, these young men had got off their backsides and secured work, yet the state was refusing to help out in the period between the stoppage...
Restaurant Review: Mere
Pride is a double-edged sword. To be in the right, I’ll take the most extreme measures, yet there's something oddly rewarding about being proven wrong, on occasion, especially when done with such pizazz, such finesse. At the beginning of last year, I visited Monica Galetti's pop up at the top of 30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin) for lunch. I'd never had the chance to visit Le Gavroche with Monica on board, but I'd heard great things, as well as...