Safestore and Our Customers

Target   Perfomance 2022/23
4.5
Maintain 4.5%+ customer satisfaction rating in each market
  UK: 4.8 Google / 4.8 Trustpilot / 4.7 Feefo
France: 4.6 Trustpilot
Spain: 4.7 Google
The Netherlands: 4.8 Trustpilot
Belgium: 4.7 Feefo / 4.5 Google


Customer Engagement

Customer-Centric Communication
The Group serves a diverse customer base and is committed to providing excellent customer service across the UK and Europe. Our success is rooted in our customer-centric approach, ensuring that we cater to individual preferences and needs through various communication methods, ensuring high standards, investing in colleague training and tools, and promoting sustainability initiatives via social media and blogs.
We recognise that customers have varied communication preferences. We offer email, LiveChat and telephony support through our Customer Support Centre to ensure that customers can reach us conveniently. Our highly trained teams handle enquiries efficiently and professionally.

To connect with customers on their terms, we maintain an active presence on social media platforms. By engaging with our audience through Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn, we provide real-time support, share updates, and gather feedback.

 

Safestore customer service


Delivering a great customer experience
Our commitment to customer service drives our success and we achieve this by empowering our colleagues to go the extra mile to exceed customer expectations and by maintaining rigorous quality standards throughout our operations. Regular audits, focused coaching, and investment in training and development help to enhance our colleagues’ skills to ensure that we consistently deliver high-quality services.

Promoting Sustainable and Green Business Initiatives
Sustainability is a top priority for the Group as we are committed to reducing our environmental footprint and promoting green initiatives. To communicate our efforts, we use social media and blogs to reach our UK and European audience. We regularly share updates about our sustainability initiatives, such as reducing carbon emissions, waste reduction, and eco-friendly product development. Our blog delves deeper into our green practices, offering insights into our sustainable supply chain, renewable energy usage, and partnerships with eco-friendly organisations. We ensure that our customers are well informed about our green initiatives, and we also highlight tips for customers to live a greener life.

Addressing Customer Feedback and Concerns
In today's highly competitive business landscape, understanding customer needs and expectations is paramount to achieving success. Customer feedback, in the form of reviews and ratings, provides invaluable insights into our products and services. We collect, monitor, and utilise customer reviews as they help us to understand what our customers expect from our products and services, allowing us to align and improve what we offer accordingly. In addition, positive reviews build trust with potential customers. They serve as social proof that others have tested and approved our products and services, which can significantly impact purchase decisions. In contrast, negative reviews pinpoint areas where we can enhance our service, providing us with invaluable insights for continuous improvement and innovation. Customer reviews also enable us to benchmark our performance against competitors. By analysing our strengths and weaknesses relative to others, we can refine our strategies.

In addition to collating Google reviews, we continue to use Feefo, an independent reviews and insight platform, to gather real-time and genuine feedback from our customers. Feefo is renowned for its credibility in the industry. Our stores in the UK receive regular feedback allowing customers to view reviews and ratings. In 2023, Safestore UK achieved a customer service rating of 4.8 with 96% rating their experience as ‘Excellent’ or ‘Good’.

We are proud to have been recognised with the Feefo Platinum Trusted Service award in the UK for the fifth year in a row. This award illustrates our dedication to providing exceptional customer experiences, underlined by the fact that all our reviews are verified as genuine, adding an extra layer of credibility to our feedback collection process.

Our team regularly monitors incoming reviews and ratings from Google and Trustpilot, ensuring timely responses to customer enquiries or concerns. This helps demonstrate our commitment to customer satisfaction by identifying trends, common issues, and opportunities for improvement.

Safestore UK has maintained an average rating of 4.8 on Google and a TrustScore of 4.8 from 1,496 reviews on Trustpilot, a testament to the business continuously incorporating customer feedback into our business processes.

During the year, our French business maintained a TrustScore service rating of 4.6 with 92% of customers rating their service experience as ‘Excellent’ or ‘Great’. Additionally, in Spain, we achieved a 4.7 out of 5 rating for customer feedback collected from Google reviews. In Belgium, our customer service was rated 4.5 on Google and 4.7 on Feefo, whilst we achieved a high score of 4.8 out of 5 on Trustpilot in the Netherlands.

Our colleagues across all markets continue to be recognised for their hard work in delivering a consistently high level of customer service. This recognition boosts morale and reinforces our commitment to making customer satisfaction a top priority as we continue to prioritise the needs and expectations of our valued customers, ensuring our ongoing success in the marketplace.

Empowering Customers for Sustainable Choices
We are committed to enabling our customers to make sustainable choices that have a positive impact on our planet. This is in addition to making a positive social and economic contribution to our communities and reducing the environmental impact of our operations. We aim to provide tools and options that allow our customers to embrace sustainability as part of their self storage journey by:
  • using digital contracts now across all markets where customers can conveniently sign their contract via an online link. 82,850 digital contracts this year have meant a total reduction of approximately 742,231 printed pages across the Group – equivalent to over 1,480 reams of paper. In the UK alone, there has been a 23% reduction of printed pages this year versus last (approximately 651,915 pages or over 1,300 reams of paper)
  • championing Refill, a scheme available in 122 Safestore stores across the UK providing free tap water to make it easy for the public to refill reusable water bottles instead of buying new plastic ones
  • providing sustainably packaged merchandise and eco-friendly box products in our stores across all markets
  • installing electric vehicle charging points in store car parks for customer use in an effort to promote eco-friendly mobility
We believe that encouraging our customers to select greener alternatives is not just an ethical obligation but also a practical necessity for the wellbeing of our planet, society, and future generations. It's a collective effort that requires businesses, individuals, and communities to work together towards a more sustainable world.  

Customer EV charging points


Product Quality and Innovation

Digital contracts
Delivering a great customer experience is at the heart of our business, and today's customers expect more than just a product or service; they demand a seamless and personalised journey that caters to their unique needs and preferences. This year, we launched digital contracts in the UK which offers the opportunity for prospective customers to obtain a storage quote and, within a few minutes, agree a contract to rent their storage space online on their connected device. The resulting contract is then sent by email. We have learnt from and adapted to evolving user behaviour online and we have appropriately identified customer types who are confident to complete the storage rental process entirely online.

App-based storage centres
In addition, the introduction of digital contracts readies the business for automated, app-based stores like our Christchurch and new Eastleigh (opened post-year end) locations, where customers can open storage unit locks with their smartphones, eliminating the need for physical keys or fobs.
The user-friendly app makes access to storage units simple and hassle-free and offers multiple benefits to our customers, including:
  • granting temporary access to others, such as family members or movers, removing the need to be physically present at the storage centre
  • usage tracking as the app may provide access logs, allowing businesses to monitor who accessed their unit and when
  • enhanced security as smart locks often provide better security features, like real-time alerts and monitoring, reducing the risk of unauthorised access or theft
  • time savings as there is no need for customers to wait for colleagues to assist with access, making the move-in process quicker and more efficient
 

Safestore website

 

Customer, Contractor, and Visitor (“CCV”) health and safety

We pride ourselves on providing a safe environment for our customers, contractors, and visitors.
Summary:
  • 16% reduction in customer, contractor, and visitor accidents.
  • 33 injuries were recorded over the past year, three of which were reportable under RIDDOR*.
  • 10 minor injuries were recorded to contractors and 23 to customers. No injuries were recorded to visitors.
  • Injuries were recorded as 14 minor cuts, 14 bumps and bruises and 2 muscular, mainly relating to customers handling their goods.
Year ended 31 October 2021 2022 2023
Number of stores 161 179 190
Customer, contractor, and visitor movements 206,871 242,559 225,828
Number of minor injuries 46 38 30
Number of reportable injuries (RIDDOR*/Recordable**) 0 1 3
RIDDOR per 100,000 CCV movements 0 0.4 1.3

* RIDDOR = Reporting of Injuries, Diseases and Dangerous Occurrences.
** Recordable = any work-related injury or illness that results in loss of consciousness, days away from work, restricted work, or transfer to another job. Any work-related injury or illness requiring medical treatment beyond first aid (European countries only).

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