At Currys, we mean business when it comes to helping everyone enjoy amazing technology - it's our bread and butter, and putting customers first is what we do best.
It's one of the reasons why our Newark repair centre team did their very best to support a deaf customer, trying to communicate with us regarding a laptop query. Having reached out through our leading RepairLive service, which is a face-to-face video calling tool enabling tech problems to be solved in the comfort of customers’ own homes, the customer had to physically write down and show the technician on screen the problem she needed solving.
Our technician responded in the same way, through writing down a response and showing it up to the camera, and in tandem, flagged the situation to his First Line Manager, Mandy Carter who had an effective solution in mind - hopefully with the help of Candy Coupland.
Having worked with her for many years, Mandy was aware of Candy's ability to communicate through British Sign Language (BSL) and instantly picked up the phone to ask her to pop over to our RepairLive workshop.
Excited to help and honoured to be asked, Candy arrived and through sign language, understood what the customer required and was able to resolve the case in real time.
"WOW - what an honour to be able to use my British Sign Language skills to support a customer in that way. It was such a rewarding feeling knowing that I had helped. I was buzzing and so grateful that Mandy had thought of me" shares Candy.
The customer showed her appreciation at the end of the call, through blowing a kiss in British Sign Language. She also left a really heart-warming, positive review on our Trust Pilot page.
Having grown up learning sign language due to a close family member being hard of hearing, BSL has always been a part of Candy's life. A few years ago, she signed up to a 2-hour session put on by the Currys Culture team, which reignited her interest to learn more.
"Learning BSL is like learning a new language, to know it fluently, it will take you ten years - but don't let that stop you - I've just started teaching my 8-year-old daughter, and she's better than I am! It's become 'our thing' and is our way of spending time together - we both love it."
As well as this, Candy's also recently started teaching BSL to her team of 64 peers, over a period of 16-20 weeks.
In its infancy, this is just one of the many examples coming out of the RepairLive service in which our colleagues are going the extra mile to support our customers. Across Currys, our team does what they can to support customers who may find it more difficult to communicate in English too. Often, colleagues who are fluent in other languages, from Spanish to Hindu and more, are called upon to translate in order to make the customer's experience as smooth as possible.
“This is just the beginning for us when it comes to supporting our customers - we will continue to do whatever we can and be as creative as we need to be, never say never. Bring it on!”
Mandy Carter