Researchplusnfk's Blog

researchplusnfk — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 09:00:29 +0000

RT @shirleyayres: I’m impressed by the membership offer from @CollegeofSW http://bit.ly/uvTXe4 & continued discuâ€¦ http://ping.fm/SPcx1

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researchplusnfk — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:08:27 +0000

RT @shirleyayres: I’m impressed by the membership offer from @CollegeofSW http://bit.ly/uvTXe4 & continued discussions with @BASW_UK…

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Customers, lovely customers

researchplusnfk — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 10:52:16 +0000

You have some lovely customers. You have spent a certain amount ‘buying’ these customers. Yes you have spent some money as you have bought and given out some business cards. You have bought a website and domain name. You might have attended a networking event.
There are plenty of people out there who will tell you how much easier and more cost effective it is to keep your existing customers and sell to them again, than it is to do all that hard work again getting some new customers. Don’t waste your money by buying your customers only to ‘throw them away’ after a single sale.
Two years ago, a study by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) revealed that four out of five executives believed that companies were losing sales every year because of a failure to engage customers. Furthermore, 80 percent suggested that increased customer engagement would translate into improved customer loyalty, and 75 percent said it would translate into increased revenue and profits.
How are you communicating with your customers? Are you listening to what they say? What have you done as a result of what they said? Customers are increasingly sophisticated. Where as in the past you might tell a few people if you got bad service or a poor product the internet has turned this into thousands. A quick message on Twitter or Facebook could quickly go to hundreds if not thousands of people.
Yes you can ask the questions where you will get praise for things done well by you and your team. Although nice and can be useful when you want to boost the team, these are not the responses that you really need.
To improve and be able to see what they are looking for those other comments. What does not get done right first time. How you cope when it has gone all wrong on you. Also important are the suggestions of what you might do better. You can always decide to ignore the ideas if they take you too far away from what you think that you do.
In the Do you Listen to your Customers survey of 2010 over 50% of businesses that had carried out some sort of consultation with their customers said that their turn over and their profits had increased as a result.
So what are you waiting for? Ask your customers how you are doing. You might be surprised what they say, both good and bad.

Embrace the difficult questions and welcome the disappointing answers.
This blog first appeared as a guest blog on the Business Vitamins site.

Filed under: blog, Customer Care, Customer Service

The Unthank Centre

researchplusnfk — Fri, 28 Jan 2011 11:31:03 +0000

The Unthank Family Centre in Norwich

Norfolk County Council plans to close the Unthank Centre in Norwich and replace the Family Centre Team with six workers across the county. This will be a reduction of about half of the practitioners with no dedicated space for the work to happen. The impact of this plan will be that children and families will not benefit from the multi disciplinary approach available to them now, nor the security offered by a centre specifically resourced for this purpose.

The Unthank Centre works with children under 12 and their families who live in Norfolk. The children will have experienced very difficult life experiences, including abuse, neglect and trauma. The families are always struggling with complex difficulties and are looking after their children in difficult circumstances.

The Family Centre has a multi disciplinary team including early years workers, social workers and therapists. They help the families stay together to heal and overcome trauma and to develop secure relationships together.

To sign the petition to support the Unthank Centre please visit http://www.gopetition.com/petition/42383.html

There will be a meeting of the County Council on February 14th. The petition will be presented then.

Filed under: blog, Norwich, social care

Backing up your data – what do you use?

researchplusnfk — Mon, 13 Dec 2010 22:17:44 +0000

Backing up your data

We have been looking at the different ways to back up our data.

There seems to be two schools of thought. Either you do the back up using external hard drives and memory sticks. The other is over the internet where the data is held on someone’s server.

With the former you have to remember to do the backing up, but you do have instant access to the back-up data. It is sitting in your office.

The latter you can set up the software to automatically and if your office was to have a fire or flood (perish the thought) then your data is safe.

So what should we do?

What system do you use and why?

Filed under: blog

SSRG Membership Survey

researchplusnfk — Tue, 16 Nov 2010 15:29:40 +0000

Research Plus+ is hosting the SSRG (Social Services Research Group) Survey on the capacity of its membership to attend events etc in the next two years
It would be of enormous help in planning events etc if you would let us know some of the difficulties you might be experiencing – and also some potential solutions!

The survey is now live on http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/ssrgmembers

http://www.research-plus.co.uk/news.php

Filed under: social care, SSRG

Research Plus presentation for National Customer Service Week

researchplusnfk — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:30:49 +0000

Research Plus Do you listen to your customers presentation 5 Oct 2010
This is the presentation given on 5th October to a room of eager business people in Norwich.

Filed under: blog, Customer Care, Customer Service Tagged: National Customer Service Week, research plus

Research Plus Presentation 5 October 2010

researchplusnfk — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 15:09:46 +0000

Here is the powerpoint presentation on do you listen to your customers given on the 5th October 2010. A few extra slides have been added to aid the understanding. We plan to add some audios at a later date. You can leave comments here or on the blog at www.research-plus.co.uk

Download now or preview on posterous

http://bit.ly/aMJRDT(942 KB)

Filed under: blog, Customer Care, Customer Service