I HOPE you all had a lovely Christmas and many businesses will still be on holiday and not back at work until the New Year.

In the days of St Andrews Travel we always used this period to think about some simple changes to put in place for the year ahead to ensure we improved our customer service and moved the business forward.

When we came back we held a days training and told all the staff what we wanted to happen and how they could help us and then had a nice dinner, with 75 staff this was no mean task.

A good Christmas read was a story about Jeff Bezos the founder of Amazon and its amazing growth and success.

At every meeting, at every level, he insisted there was always an empty seat that took pride of place around the meeting table.

This seat was of course for the customer who was theoretically sitting at the meeting and had to be considered at every decision that was made.

He placed a lot of value on putting the customer at the top and designing every process around the whole of that customer journey and experience.

The delivery of the goods was everything, when would they arrive? Same day delivery is now available on many products.

Bolton-based white goods supplier AO.com is already offering this.

Order a fridge in the morning and have it delivered in the afternoon.

A specific time slot for the customer, the name of the driver and a his mobile phone number! It's no wonder its founder John Roberts has turned this into one of the UK's top companies by putting the customer at the top of the agenda..

Many local businesses would do well taking a leaf out of the books of Amazon and AO.com ensuring their systems and processes work principally for the customer and not for their business. I hope these articles throughout the year have helped local companies gain competitive advantage in whatever you are doing.

Here's to a customer focused, happy and prosperous 2015.

Andrew Dickson is The Wow Factor helping companies do better. He is also Chairman of 96.5 Bolton FM community radio. E :- amdickson21@gmail.com.