CUSTOMER STORIES: Furness Building Society
Furness Building Society has been established for over 150 years and works to help its customers achieve their financial goals. It prides itself on putting customer first, providing a friendly service, keeping customer’s money safe and secure and servicing customers via their branches, online or on the phone. The Building Society employs around 200 staff across nine branches in Cumbria and Lancashire and a head office in Barrow in Furness.
Chris Casey is Server and Infrastructure SME and works with a team of five IT staff. He has worked for the building society for 20 years and in his time, has worked with several IT disposal and recycling companies. “Initially we were working with a local company,” he explained. “However, not only did we have to pay them for our WEEE waste disposal but we also had to transport all our kit to them ourselves. I found an alternative company and although they did collect from us we still had to pay them for disposal.” Chris was sure there was a better option and he asked his LinkedIn network for recommendations. Several asked him to get in touch with Stone Group and an Account Manager from Stone also saw his post and got in touch. “The introductions were made at the same time as the pandemic hit and we all had to work from home,” said Chris. “Stone Group and I exchanged several emails and telephone calls and I was really impressed with their recycling set-up.”
Stone Group boast an award-winning, WEEE compliant recycling facility at its Staffordshire HQ. It is fully accredited by the Environmental Agency and awarded a Distinction from ADISA, as well as industry leading certifications from Cyber Essentials, ISO 27001, DIPCOG and more. Chris was also impressed with the exceptional customer service level that Stone Group could provide to
Furness Building Society. “The fact they would collect from us for free, securely dispose of our kit and even pay us for any equipment they could recycle and sell on seemed too good to be true!”
Exceptional Customer Service
Having established what was required Chris was looking forward to using Stone and putting their customer service claims to the test. Once Chris had his first batch of equipment for collection he asked Stone to pick it up. “Our head office is a four-hour drive from Staffordshire and so we collected our equipment from branches and had it ready in a ground floor space at the head office,” said Chris. The security cleared Stone drivers collected the equipment on time and removed the equipment in GPS tracked vans. Now, Furness Building Society require Stone Group to collect a huge range of IT, telephony and audio visual equipment along with the associated ancillaries and the collections take place about twice a year.
“I must show my appreciation to the drivers,” said Chris. “They are unfailingly polite, professional and courteous. As we are all working from home I ask them to ring me about half an hour before they are due to arrive so that somebody could meet them – they always do and we have never had any issues.” Stone Group protects customers from data breaches and the financial
penalties that could be incurred by erasing data to the same high standards used by the MOD and so provide peace of mind to its customers. Chris said: “Naturally, we are passionate about ensuring our customer’s data is secure and so it was important that our recycling partner had all the necessary data erasure accreditations. We need to keep an accurate record of certificates
of destruction for our own audit trails.”
Furness Building Society is committed to sustainability and so having Stone Group be able to break down and recycle much of its old kit is a real bonus. Once equipment arrives at Stone Group’s recycling centre, any value in residual kit is realised. Stone Group experts will strip down and refurbish or reuse as much equipment as possible and offer clients a far market rebate on qualifying equipment. “We are pleased to be able to shout about this as an environmental credential for the organization,” adds Chris. “However, the fact that Stone Group actually pay us hundreds of pounds in rebates was a welcome surprise.”
The Stone 360® App Has Made a Great Service Even Better
Designed to make IT recycling service even simpler and more rewarding to customers and the environment, the Stone 360® app makes managing end-of-life tech easy, allows businesses to achieve their sustainability goals and play their part in combatting the growing e-waste crisis. “I used the Stone 360® app for my latest collection,” said Chris. “It’s made a real difference to how I used to report my collection and saves me a lot of time. When requesting collections via email I had to take photographs of the kit on my phone, upload to my computer then email to Stone. However, the app has taken out all that and it’s really quick and easy to use. It’s made a great service even better.”
