Sharing Experiences

Sharing our experiences with others via the internet is now such a normal part of everyday life. Whether it is posting photos from your evening out with friends; the sarcastic one liners letting everyone know you are not best pleased with your partner, work colleague, friend, mother; or the “selfie” from the department store changing rooms as you try on that new dress (!) So normal are these little glimpses in to friends and families hour by hour lives, all flashing before us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Snapchat and LinkedIn, to name just a few, that it is hard to remember what life was like before.
However, with this shared experience, either on purpose or inadvertently, come the reviews and testimonials. The horror story of the plumber leaving loft pipes slowly dripping or the wonderful story of the sales assistant helping past shop closing time on a Sunday afternoon, all there for others to read and share on these social networking sites, forums or anywhere the internet allows you to comment.

The Increase in Internet Access

There has been a huge increase in internet access in the UK in the past 2 or 3 years and in 2013 72% of all adults bought goods or services online, up from 53% in 2008. That’s a 19% increase in just 5 years and equates to about 36 million adults in Great Britain accessing the internet on a daily basis compared with just 16 million in 2006.

That is huge potential for any business, and it doesn’t matter whether they are local or national, all these people (21 million households (83%) in 2013) with daily internet access and all quite prepared to let others know about the experience they have just had. Customer service is therefore even more important in a digital age, not less so, as you might initially think because the vast majority of people are so ready to tell you what has just happened to them.

Customer Reviews

If you are one of our customers or an ex customer doubtless you have been asked to leave a review for us on either Facebook or Google+ and we, like a lot of other businesses, really value this feedback. Not only does it help us to maintain what we would hope are high standards of service, but also helps other potential users when making a decision about using storage.

Increase in Household Internet Use

Devices and Internet use

In 2016, the internet was used daily or almost daily by 82% of adults (41.8 million) in Great Britain, compared with 78% (39.3 million) in 2015 and 35% (16.2 million) in 2006.

In 2016, 77% of adults bought goods or services online, up from 53% in 2008, but only up 1 percentage point from 2015.

Clothes or sports goods were purchased by 54% of adults, making them the most popular online purchase in 2016.

In 2016, 89% of households in Great Britain (23.7 million) had internet access, an increase from 86% in 2015 and 57% in 2006.

Internet access will only grow as there is still another 11% of GB households with no internet access, for what reasons I don’t know, this could be down to technical issues, location and of course, personal choice, but that still means there is potential for further development and of course potential for more opinions to be shared, more shopping to be done and more information and knowledge to be gained.

The full report for “Internet Access – Household and Individuals 2016” can be found here on the website for Office for National Statistics