Ok, so the weekly and even monthly occurrence of this particular blog series hasn't really worked out, as I can see the last one was done in April and it is now July. However, that at least that means we have been very busy taking care of all your orders & so just haven't had time to write about what we've been up to. This is one that is difficult for me to write, as it's not my full time role. However, it just so happens that we're had a few people off on Summer holidays and so I have been assisting in the Admin Team. So here goes:

How I Helped A Customer I had just arrived home for the evening on Friday when I got a message through Facebook from a lady in New York. She needed a 60th Birthday Gift delivered by the next day, Saturday, but had left it a bit late.  I was starting to type back that the couriers had already collected from us for the day so unfortunately it was too late to send anything out. Fortunately it then turned out it was actually a local delivery to us and Neil was still in the office. This meant he was able to assemble the gift basket and offered to deliver it the next day to the recipients surprise birthday party. I was able to tell Jane to go ahead and place her order online, and that we would take care of it. She was absolutely delighted we were able to help at such short notice. She had shopped with us before for her sister and the gift basket had been a big hit, so fingers crossed this one was too.

Something Nice/Rewarding That Happened We love reading the feedback our customers and recipients leave and we were particularly moved by a recent review detailing how her poorly niece in hospital was so excited to receive her get well gift basket. She was too weak to open it at first as she was recovering from a major operation, but she looked at the doll inside through the cellophane and it helped to keep her mind focused on becoming well enough to open it. She smiled for the first time in days apparently. They included a photograph of the little girl and it brought a tear to our eyes. This is the reason we started BasketsGalore, to help bring friends and family together and so this made our day.

Something Difficult/ Frustrating That Happened We pride ourselves on our quality gift baskets and next day delivery service, so you can imagine how frustrating it was to discover one of our usual couriers failed to pick up from us one evening. We have a daily collection you see and so a driver calls automatically every day. Unfortunately our usual driver was on holiday and the new driver had mechanical troubles and wasn't able to let us know in time. Neil discovered all the gift baskets that had been assembled that day sitting in a neat pile and when he called the delivery company it was too late for them to send someone else. This was incredibly frustrating as all the gift basket and hampers needed to be re-made and our customers that were expecting delivery the next day were going to be disappointed. Damage control was to let everyone affected know, make apology calls to recipients where necessary and compensate for the delayed delivery.

Something Funny That Happened As you may know we take photographs each day of our Gift Baskets/Hampers for our "Daily Dispatch" blog and competition. We try to showcase all the items inside by laying them out in an artistic way so we just loved the photograph one gift basket recipient had sent to the sender upon receipt of his gift. As we scrolled by the image we thought it was one of our own photographs as all the items has been carefully set out in front of the BasketsGalore lidded hamper, with the shred and ribbon also featuring. It made us chuckle that it was such a good effort and had almost fooled us into thinking it was one of our own. We think this customer should win the "Best Photograph" award or should be offered a job photographing our baskets!

Best Reason For Sending a Gift Basket There are obviously LOTS of reasons for sending a gift basket, with the majority being for the same main reasons such as "Thank You", "Happy Birthday" and "Congratulations" so it's nice to see ones being sent for more unusual reasons/occasions. I spotted one recently being sent for "SysAdmin Appreciation Day" on 28th July. It was going to an IT Team in Dublin from a Company they must look after in the US. We thought this was such a nice touch and wondered when "Gift Basket Company Appreciation Day" is?

In Conclusion…There is so much going on in a week of Gift Basket Land that we really should try to share these stories with you on a more regular basis. Please make sure we write again in August or you can tell us off!