How Can a Changing Places Toilet Improve my Business Reputation?

Written by Ben Hickey
January 17, 2019

There are several reasons why a Changing Places toilet can improve the reputation of your business. A good reputation means more business. it’s as simple as that. How can a Changing Places toilet boost your business reputation and bring in more customers?

A Good Business Reputation

Business reputation is quite an intangible concept, but a good reputation can benefit your business in several ways including: customer preference; support in times of crisis and the future value of your organisation.

The trust and confidence of your customers has a direct effect on your bottom line. With a bad reputation you won’t gain those customers to start with, existing customers could leave; and your business can eventually fail. A reputation of failure in certain areas, such as accessible facilities, can drive away potential customers – that is something we will discuss further down the page.

Business reputation is more important currently because of how easily and fast a negative incident or comment can spread. In the past, your business had to work hard to get a bad reputation! This is because consumers discussed products and businesses by word of mouth. Now we have social media and ways to communicate instantly, a bad, or good reputation, can spread very quickly.

The business owner today must be conscientious of their reputation on a constant basis and always be looking for ways to boost their ‘good points’.

Learn more about our Changing Places facilities

The ‘Purple Pound’

A good reputation consists of lots of different elements; service and values, are just two of them. Also included is accessibility. If you don’t ensure your business is accessible to people with disabilities, you will quickly gain a reputation as being a destination not to visit. On the other hand, making your business accessible to all types of people will bring a reputation of inclusivity.

Now, if you are under the impression that the market size is too small to make it worthwhile looking at how accessible your business is, then refer to the ‘purple pound’.

The ‘purple pound’ is a term that was coined to describe the spending power of disabled people and their families. The purple pound has an estimated value of £212 billion in the British economy. There is a huge proportion of people, just waiting to use your business or facilities – provided they are suitable.

What is the effect of excluding these people? One example is the British domestic holiday market, a recent survey done by Visit England shows just how much money is being missed by UK businesses because they can’t provide cater for disabled people.

The survey shows that 430,000 British adults with an impairment did not take a domestic trip in the last 12 months due to the lack of accessibility provision. Converted to average spend, they estimate that is a £116.7M opportunity that is being missed.

Making your business accessible and attractive to disabled people boots your reputation as a ‘good business’, which in turn will bring in more people.

Accessible doesn’t just mean providing a regular disabled toilet. There are several ways you can make your business suitable:

Ramps and automatic doors
Clear open spaces for wheelchair users
Signs suitable for people with vision problems
Braille on signage or menus
Daylight lighting is better for people with sight problems
A variety of high and low tables
Portable debit card machines or extendable cords
Turn on closed captioning on TV’s
Provide staff with sensitivity training
Provide accessible or Changing Places toilets

Changing Places Toilets

As you can see from the above list, there are plenty of things you can do to make your business more accessible and boost your ‘disability friendly’ reputation. Don’t forget, you should tell people about these features too! Help boost your own reputation by showing your examples of accessibility on your social media or with PR.

Once you have implemented the small changes, it is time to think about bigger projects, such as installing a Changing Places toilet. One of the leading reasons that many disabled people don’t visit destinations is the lack of suitable toilet provisions. A Changing Places toilet offers much more than a regular accessible toilet and can open your business up to many more customers, just waiting to spend their purple pounds.

To find out more, get in touch with a member of the RISE team for advice.