NI Candle Supplies Customer Touchpoint Survey - March Feedback

We are overwhelmed and grateful for the number of responses we had to the March Customer Touchpoint Survey. We’ve had some really good feedback as well as strong statistics that are going to help influence what we will and won’t be looking into, and what changes we’d like to bring to the store.

In this blog, we are going to give you an honest and data-driven breakdown of our own thoughts, plans and improvements for NI Candle Supplies and how we will continue to actively grow and support the candle making community.

If you need more insight about this survey is or how you could take part next time, please see our other blog linked here.

General Statistics and Points for Improvement

Before we dive straight in, we wanted to give you a general idea of how the survey was received by our Mailing List.

In total, we had 309 visits to our survey, of which 202 people responded. This meant we had a completion rate of 73.2% and the average time to complete the survey was 6 minutes and 58 seconds.

Although we are extremely happy with these numbers, we think our main downfall was not having a “Not Interested” option. A great example of this was our question about Dupe Candle Fragrances. In the ‘Other’ answer option, we had a large number of people who said “No” or “Not interested”. To give us a clearer idea of who is and isn’t interested, we’re going to have this option in future surveys.

Our Immediate Plan and Changes to the Website

Customisation

In question 13 we asked you to give us some general feedback, product requests or ideas that you’d like to see featured at NI Candle Supplies in the future. One of the most recurring answers was about Customisation. We’ve seen comments on our Facebook page and in the Candle Makers UK Group about this before and have been toying with the idea for a while. But after this survey, we know we want to bring a customisation option to the website. This is currently a work in progress but we hope to have ready for you by the end of April.

Double Point Days

66.3% of you said you preferred our Loyalty Point Scheme to Seasonal Offers and Discounts. We know this is a point of difference to other candle supply companies so we want to expand on this even more. We’d like to introduce days throughout the year where we can offer double loyalty points to our customers. We aren’t sure what days these are going to be yet, but we’ll be sure to give our Loyalty Point Scheme members a head’s up when these days occur.

Updates to our Fragrance Listings

We recently finished updating all of our fragrance oil listings to make it easier to ascertain the maximum usage for oil in various applications. This includes a detailed maximum usage breakdown, flash point, IFRA availability for Class 9 product, if it contains Vanillin and if it’s safe for bath and body use.

We wanted to give you this table so that you have as much information as possible to get started with your candle making. Please also use our Scent Load Calculator, which is at the bottom of the page for every fragrance. This will help with how much wax and oil you need to use.

Reed Diffuser Packaging

This was one of the most popular answers from Question 13. Don’t worry, we are working on it! We can’t promise anything yet, but we are aiming to launch these in the second half of the year.

Expanding the Reed Diffuser Range

83.2% of you said that you’d like to see our Reed Diffusers bases in different sizes. As this is a relatively new range for NI Candle Supplies, we’d like to start by introducing a second size to the range so we can gauge how popular this is. We’d then like to review the colours options in our next survey.

Expanding our Fragrance Range

One of the most rated products we sell are our fragrances and it seems a lot of you would like to see more of them. We have 4 new fragrances just about to launch but we will look into more options as well.

At this time we are not going to introduce Fragrance Dupes to our store. This is due to the divided opinion on if you’d be happy to pay up to 25% more for these. 49% of people said they would, whereas 51% of people said they wouldn’t. We felt these percentages didn’t match the numbers we saw in our previous question about which dupes you’d like us to stock, therefore, we aren’t going to bring this in. However, we may look at this again in the future.

There are some things we can’t do:

Expanding our Cambridge Base Range

Despite the popularity of our Cambridge Base range, it’s not feasible for us to expand this collection at the moment. We also won’t be able to offer these bases in smaller sizes as they aren’t available from our manufacturer.
But with the new Customisation feature you will be able to request different coloured bases, like the grey we mentioned in the survey. It’s important to note that Customisations are dependent on what is available from the manufacturer and minimum order quantities apply.

Trio Cambridge Candle Boxes

Due to the weight of the finished product, we won’t be able to create a trio packaging box like our 9cl Danube bases for our 20cl and 30cl Cambridge ones. However, we are going to see if we can make a duo pack possible.

 

Providing Legal Advice on Legislation

One of the most common areas we are asked for advice on is Legislation, CLP and SDS requirements. As a supplier we have a sound understanding of these areas however we are not the governing body when it comes to these regulations and as such are only able to offer advice within our understanding of the guidelines. This cannot be used in place of your own research and follow up with the relevant governing bodies. That said, we'd like to be able to point you in the right direction, so we’ll work on creating a general guide and links to where you can find the resources you need.

Future Blog Topics

Our Candle Top Buys

Similar to our Christmas Blog feature of our top 10 Christmas Inspired Candles to buy, we like to be able to offer more opportunities to feature candle makers who are using our products. If you like to be featured in something like this, then make sure you sign up to our mailing list as this is where we announce and invite people to apply.

Candle Abbreviations and What They Mean

There are so many abbreviations people use when they talk about candles. It’s safe to say it’s far easier and more convenient to say CLP than Classification, Labelling and Packaging. But for those of you who struggle to understand these, we are going to work on creating a glossary that you can refer back to.

Starting a Candle Making Business Basics

Although this is a little out of scope, we’ve learned that 30.2% of you are looking to start your own business and 27.7% of you have just started one. That 57.9% of our audience who may be in the dark about what they need to do. In the future, we’d like to work on creating a basic guide for you. In the meantime we have a number of How To Guides and Tips and Tricks blogs in our Resource Centre which can help you start and troubleshoot your candle making.

Addressing Concerns on Our Ability to Supply

Whilst we do our best to keep a good amount of stock on the website there are sometimes situations that we can’t control. An example of this would be delays on our shipments. Which is something we experienced just before the Christmas period. We apologise for any knock-on effect these situations have to your businesses but we are always trying our best to stay on top of stock.

Not many people are aware, but we are able to offer advanced ordering service to guarantee product availability. (Subject to availability from the manufacturer.)

• To take advantage of this service the Minimum Order Quantity needs to be a full pack size.
• Once the availability of this stock is confirmed a 50% deposit is required with the balance payable upon the arrival of stock to our warehouse but prior to customer delivery.
• This service has a 12 week lead time, but with future planning, you can order stock to cover this period.

 Ordering this way also means we can offer bespoke items such as pink bases or different colour lids that we don’t normally stock. These will be subject to availability and what is offered by our manufacturer but please contact us if this is of interest to you. We’ll do our best to help you get the stock you need and want.

And Finally, Thank You Again!

There you have it, our completed notes on what we’d like to achieve based on your feedback. Although we can’t do everything, we hope the immediate changes like the Customisation feature are well received and something candle makers would like to see.

We’d also like to say a big thank you to 93.9% of you who rated NI Candle Supplies Customer Service 5/5 stars. As a small team, we are so happy to see that such a large amount of you are happy with how we are presenting ourselves. Not to mention all the kind words you left us in the Feedback section of the survey.