Sam Whitelaw, ETB’s Warehouse Manager
I came to ETB straight after leaving university and I’ve been here for nine years now. After starting in an entry level position in the warehouse team, I then became a team leader before being promoted to warehouse manager a few months ago.
There are 13 of us in my team, and a large part of our responsibility is preparing products for shipping, although we also receive incoming goods, before putting them away, and co-ordinate stock.
Although each member of the team has a specific role, we are all trained in every aspect of the department, which ensures we can provide cover to manage busy periods to guarantee our products are always shipped out in a timely manner.
There’s a collaborative atmosphere here - and having a variety of skills and responsibilities also makes for a happy team.
Shipping at ETB – what makes us different?
Although we already receive great feedback on our service - as shown by our 5* Trustpilot rating - there’s always a drive towards improving our accuracy even further and giving the best service we can.
Like every other stage of the customer journey at ETB, the team has embedded multi-person checks to ensure everything is as it should be. For example, the first stage is picking the products from the shelf, so whoever picks it gives it to someone else to pack. No order ever goes out that isn’t checked by at least two people.
Since Brexit, the paperwork involved in shipping goods to EU countries has become a lot more complicated, so we’ve provided additional training to the team to ensure that we maintain our excellent standards.
It may sound strange, but something that customers mention a lot in our Trustpilot reviews is the high standard of our packaging! We often get lovely comments from buyers about their goods arriving in pristine condition due to the care we take over this.
One recent review said: “My device came like it was new even though it was second hand. I have never had something well packed from an IT Tech seller before. Usually due the weight and poor packaging, the item comes damaged. Not with ETB!”
“I really liked the fact they put so much effort in the wrapping of the package to minimise any damage from shipping,” said another.
One of my favourite customer comments was: “When I got my product it was packaged with the most care I have ever seen.”
This praise is because where some companies simply bubble wrap their products and put them in a box, we use bespoke foam packaging – which is 100% recyclable - that we’ve had specially made to fit and protect each specific part of our kit.
Customers appreciate our special foam packaging so much that they quite often ask us to send them a bit extra for them to use themselves, and as part of our ‘above and beyond’ service, we usually oblige.
We also ensure that none of our packaging waste, whether it’s offcuts from our foam or slot waste from our cardboard boxes, ends up as landfill – it all goes for recycling.
You’ve probably guessed by now that at ETB, we love a bit of quality testing, and that goes for our packaging too. We thoroughly test our packaging by putting it through as much rough handling as possible, including dropping it from a height to make sure it protects the goods inside.
As part of our testing process, we also send complete shipments to our offices in Glasgow and Sheffield, so we can ensure our packaging protects what’s inside for the full journey. If problems arise, we will always try to improve and adapt our packaging to limit damage as much as we can.
Although we aren’t directly responsible for the delivery of goods – we use couriers – our customer service team will always keep in touch if there are any unexpected delays, and this is something our customers really value. Communication is definitely key.
The consistently positive feedback we get from our customers is so important to us at ETB, and my team takes a lot of pride in the part we play in this.
