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2
Aug
2016
The Oracle in Reading wins national award for outstanding customer service

02 AUGUST 16: The Oracle in Reading has today been named the UK’s best CollectPlus location in the brand’s quarterly awards programme, which recognises excellent customer satisfaction and service levels over the period April to June 2016. 

CollectPlus is the UK’s largest independent store-based delivery and returns service, and offers a convenient way for people to collect online purchases or return unwanted items to more than 360 high street and online retailers, including John Lewis, Very and ASOS – all at their local convenience store.

The CollectPlus service is located at the Customer Service Desk in The Oracle, and is staffed throughout the day by a dedicated Customer Service team. The Oracle also houses over 80 stores as well as many restaurants, cafés and bars and an eleven screen Vue cinema.

The Oracle joined the CollectPlus network in December 2015, and is open from 9.30am to 8pm Monday to Friday, 9am to 7pm on Saturday and 11am to 5pm on Sunday.  

Marc Murphy, Retail Business Manager at The Oracle, said:   

“The whole team is very pleased to win the CollectPlus Store of the Quarter award; especially given that this has been our first full quarter offering CollectPlus. We joined the CollectPlus network to offer this additional service to our customers, and it’s been very well received. It’s also useful for our retailers, as they can offer the Click & Collect option to customers if something is not in stock. It has contributed towards an increase in footfall visiting the centre, and we aim to beat our customer service scores next quarter.”

The CollectPlus ‘Store of the Quarter’ awards programme recognises the best stores in the CollectPlus network of 5,800 newsagents, convenience stores, petrol stations and supermarkets. With 12 regional winners selected, The Oracle was judged to be amongst the very best in the company’s nationwide network, achieving the best overall performance for customer satisfaction, scoring an impressive 4.85 out of 5 stars between April and June 2016.

Marc and his team were presented with their award by Neil Ashworth, CEO at CollectPlus, who said:

“It’s fantastic to present The Oracle with our national Store of the Quarter award following their very successful first few months as part of the CollectPlus network. I would like to thank the Customer Service team for all of their hard work and great style in providing such an outstanding level of service to CollectPlus customers.

Our focus is very much on providing customers with a convenient service, and the team here at The Oracle are a shining example to our nationwide network of over 5,800 stores.”

Recent research has demonstrated that stores benefit from offering the CollectPlus service, as two-thirds (67%) of customers dropping off or collecting a parcel, across the network, are visiting that particular store for the first time. The research also showed that stores in the network take an average of £3,095 a year in additional revenue, on top of the chance to be crowned winners in the quarterly and annual store awards scheme.

Founded in 2009, CollectPlus is a joint venture between PayPoint, the leading retail payment network, and independent parcel carrier, Yodel. For more information visit www.collectplus.co.uk.

-ENDS-

Notes to Editor

For further information, please contact the CollectPlus team at the Red Consultancy:

Email: [email protected]

Tel: 0207 025 6500

CollectPlus scores 9.2/10 on TrustPilot, with 82.7% of customers giving CollectPlus 5/5 stars (as of 20.07.16).

‘Store of the Quarter’ Terms and Conditions can be viewed by visiting http://www.paypoint.co.uk/retailers/terms-conditions.

ABOUT COLLECTPLUS

CollectPlus is the UK’s largest independent store-based parcel delivery and returns service. It offers a simple and convenient way for people to collect online purchases from or return unwanted items to more than 300 high street and online retailers, including John Lewis, New Look and ASOS – all at their local convenience store.

It is also possible to send parcels to any UK address from a CollectPlus store, making it a convenient option for those who sell products via online marketplaces such as eBay, as well as acting as a cheaper and convenient alternative parcel service for sending packages to friends and family.

Founded in 2009, CollectPlus was the first business to offer third party click and collect in the UK and now has a network of over 5,800 conveniently located parcel stores across the UK, nearly all of which are open early ‘til late seven days a week. 90% of the UK’s urban population live within a mile of a CollectPlus point and 89% within five miles in rural areas. 

CollectPlus now handles in excess of 300,000 parcels a week and in July 2015 handled its 50 millionth parcel. CollectPlus is a joint venture between PayPoint, the leading retail payment network, and independent parcel carrier, Yodel.

ABOUT PAYPOINT

We support market leading national networks across 39,000 convenience stores in the UK and Romania so that our customers are always close to a PayPoint store. In thousands of locations, as well as at home or on the move, people use us better to control their household finances, essential payments and in-store services. Our UK network contains more branches than all banks, supermarkets and Post Offices together, putting us at the heart of communities for over 10 million regular weekly customers.

We have a proven track record of decades of tech-led innovation, providing retailers with tools that attract customers into their shops. Our industry-leading payments systems give first class service to the customers of over 1,500 clients - utility companies, retailers, transport firms and mobile phone providers, government and more.

We are on and offline; providing for payments by cash, card including contactless; retail, phone and digital; at home, work and whilst out and about from Land’s End to the highlands and islands – helping to keep modern life moving.

Multichannel payments

We offer clients streamlined consumer payment processing and transaction routing in one, seamlessly integrated solution, through MultiPay. This gives customers the flexibility to pay in the way that best suits them; including mobile app, online, text, phone/IVR and cash in-store.

MultiPay is live with Utilita, a fast growing challenger energy supplier. We have signed several other energy companies, a framework agreement with Procurement for Housing and, significantly, Scottish and Southern Energy, our first Big 6 energy client

Retail networks

In the UK, our network includes over 29,000 local shops including Co-op, Spar, Sainsbury’s Local, Tesco Express and thousands of independent outlets. These outlets are quick and convenient places to make energy meter prepayments, bill payments, benefit payments, mobile phone top-ups, transport tickets, TV licences, cash withdrawals and more.

Our Romanian network continues to grow profitably.  We have more than 10,200 local shops, helping people to make cash bill payments, money transfers, road tax payments and mobile phone top-ups. Our clients include all the major utilities and telcos and many other consumer service companies.

The UK network also includes over 4,200 LINK branded ATMs, and 10,000 of our terminals enable retailers to accept debit, credit and contactless payments, including Apple Pay.

We operate over 3,000 Western Union agencies in the UK and Romania for international and domestic money transfers.

ABOUT YODEL

UK independent parcel carrier Yodel handles over 155 million parcels every year and has a relationship with 85 per cent of the UK's top retailers. The company is headquartered in Hatfield and has over 60 locations across the UK, including three central sorts and over 50 service centres.

Yodel offers a range of services to meet the needs of its clients and their customers.  Through its sister company, Arrow XL, Yodel can also offer a two man service for white goods and large items up to 120kg.

To find out more visit www.yodel.co.uk