This month a number of you got in touch to say your Digests had suddenly stopped arriving and to ask what was going on.

In many cases your subscriptions had expired. However, several of you said you’d received no warning or invitation to renew.

Under the Data Protection Act, we have to ask your permission to send you renewal emails, and not all of you gave us your permission. Some did, but still didn’t receive renewals emails. I can only guess that the emails were lost in transmission, rejected/bounced back or were not sent in the first place. This is something we are looking into.

However, it’s worth mentioning that sometimes you might not receive your Digest, even during the period of your subscription. There are several reasons for that. Most commonly, the Digest is stopped by your internet service provider or by your computer’s firewall. The Digest is a regular, large email, sent out en masse from one address and, because it is made up of discussion items, it inevitably contains some of the trigger words for anti-spam software, such as ‘free’.

More unusually, the Digest might not reach you because your IT department doesn’t allow you to receive html format emails, or because it is over a pre-set size limit.

We send out the Digest Monday to Friday, except bank holidays and over Christmas. The Digest is sent to the address you register with us and in the format – html or plain text – that you sign up for. We won’t change the Digest or the way it is sent without warning subscribers in advance, so if you received the Digest in the past but don’t now, it is worth checking with your IT department to see if they’ve made any changes.

Remember, though, the TJ team is always here to help.

If anyone is thinking of contacting the TJ team, but has put it off because most organisations now employ those irritating telephone queuing systems (press one to wait all day, press two if you have an unusually long life expectancy and can be ignored for longer, etc), don’t worry. Someone who will help you there and then will answer your call promptly: they will put you in contact with the person who can help you or sort out your query and then come back to you. Similarly, emails are responded to as quickly as possible. If you have any questions, do please get in touch.

Incidentally, October’s TJ featured an excellent article by Caroline Dunk called ‘Five steps to heaven’, in which she outlined five steps for successfully delivering an outstanding call centre customer experience.

However, on reading that in many ways call centres “represent a significant improvement over the ‘old’ way of doing things, providing a personal service at a time to suit us”, I felt a cynical rise to my eyebrow, because, when a well-known communications organisation failed to install my telephone line on the agreed date, I ended up spending more than 12 hours on hold in queuing systems and being passed from person to person, none of whom could or would help. Although the line was finally installed, 21 days late and only after my MP stepped in, the experience left me with a Chief Inspector Dreyfus-like tic and a low annoyance threshold.

So I’m glad to say that here at TJ we don’t have telephone queuing systems. We believe in the personal touch.

This month’s Digest

John Briggs was organising a conference for a team of about 35 people who were nearing the end of a two-year project. He wanted to include something that would celebrate the success of the project and everyone’s part in it, and he turned to the forum for ideas.

There were some great replies – have a look on the archive under ‘ideas/suggestions for celebrating
success’.

Astrid Keogh described an activity she’d used on an awayday with a group of eight, with really positive results.

Before the day, she contacted the participants to let them know what they’d be doing and to ask them to think about it in advance.

Each participant was given Post-it notes on which to write thank you messages to every other member of the team. The thank you could be for anything – from making a great cuppa to cheering them up or going that extra mile.

Astrid framed the exercise by talking about the impact we have on other people, explaining that quite often we just don’t realise what impact we have. She gave some examples of others’ impact on her.

Earlier in the day, each person had designed their own flipchart page and when they were completed, the Post-its were placed in the relevant places.

She said: “The process of writing the thank yous was very calming on the participants’ states and they really got lost in thinking of positive events. Each person then had some time to read his or her thank yous. The effect of this was very uplifting. I did this at the end of the day and each person took their flipchart page home.”

The team still has all the flips on their walls and they keep adding to them.

You can download this article free by subscribing and logging in as a Full TJ member

Price: £1.00

Related News

• Employers must face up to Facebook
• The Editor
• High demand for political skills met with low levels of ability

Related Discussion Topics

• Consequences of bad communication
• Employee Consultation Forum
• Teaching English as a foreign language

Latest News

• Skills for Life target achieved two years early
• The Institute of IT Training broadens its range of training awards
• Welcome for Equality Bill
• Inspirational single dad scoops learning and training award
• Retail sector talks shop with students