6 Tips for Recycling Companies to Delight their Customer

Image counts and first impressions matter! Particularly in the world of recycling where customers now have a wide choice of partners and their corporate brand is at stake.

So here are my top tips for putting your best foot forward and showing off your capabilities and strengths as a professional recycling company. BTW – this blog is very much one of those “do as I say and not as I do” articles as our website is very much a work in progress...but hey-ho it’s my blog!

1. Show your wares

Use different media including website, print, email and social media to tell customers about your USPs. Make sure you display any:

• Certifications
• Memberships of professional associations
• Details of processes
• Information on material disposition

2. Your authority

Take a leaf out of inbound marketers and stamp your authority on your area of expertise by providing white papers, blogs and news articles that are relevant to your industry and that your customers will find informative and educational.

3. Case studies

The greatest communicators will tell you that the best way to get your point across is to tell stories! People like to hear stories because oftentimes they can directly relate stories to their own experience. Make sure that you have great case studies on your website that detail how you’ve solutioned problems for your customers.

4. Get them involved

Yes. Everybody is busy. However, people don’t like to be left out! As I mentioned in a previous blog post you should document your processes and extend the boundaries to include your customer’s relevant operations (e.g. dispatch of waste, compliance reporting). This does a number of things: it lets them know that you fully understand their requirements and pain points; it ensures that any changes are properly planned and communicated; and finally your customers feel valued and have a sense of ownership as a result of providing input into your process design.

5. Transparency

Process, data and disposition. Give them detailed reports that makes it easy for them to communicate to stakeholders including their own customers, the Environment Agency, the media etc. Your waste management software should provide:

• Track and trace reports – the who, what, where and when? You should be able to provide recycling reports that shows exactly what was received, what treatment was performed (including data destruction for HDDs or sterilisation for clinical waste) and where the resulting waste or fractions ended up. If you can’t do this you’ve got a problem!
• Duty of care – accurate waste transfer notes showing that collected waste was properly classified, quantified and transported by a licensed carrier to a licensed treatment or disposal site.
• Recycling Performance – show them how good they (and you) are doing with charts and reports showing overall recycling rates, performance by period, location, waste stream. Identify and communicate potential opportunities for improvement.
• CSR reporting – provide them with reports on CO2 saved as a result of using your service as well as any other CSR benefits
• Certificates of destruction – a signed undertaking that your customer’s waste has been recycled or disposed of properly. For IT disposal companies this should also include copies of data wipe certificates

6. Make it easy for them!

Your customers should ideally be able to access all of the above information via an easy-to-use and informative customer portal that matches the style and branding of your existing website. Give them:

• An informative dashboard with interactive charts and reports
• The ability to create online orders
• The ability to download their compliance information in the relevant format

So that’s my 6 top tips for recycling companies to delight their customers. As usual I welcome your feedback and suggestions...haven’t had any yet. Perhaps you could be the first?