A suggestion box is a common tool in business to get information about quality of the business from the customer or employee standpoint. The typical suggestion box is a box into which people could insert notes, ideas for business improvement or surveys. Lots of other suggestion forums exist, and these include many virtual online boxes, mail-in survey forms, or suggestion bulletin boards.
It’s important to differentiate the suggestion box concept as used by employees or customers. Employee suggestions reveal a lot about relations with employers and even can create a forum for suggestions on how to improve . Some employees can be concerned that negative criticisms of an employer could result in difficult consequences. To this end, many employers keep the suggestion box anonymous, as long as employees remain respectful. Suggestions from anonymous employees could give employers a strong sense of how effectively they interact with employees.
The customer suggestion box gives companies a way to determine . Implementing some suggestions makes customers feel that their opinions count, and there are usually plenty of suggestions to choose from that are useful. In fact, some companies ask if they can use the customer’s name when they make a change, so that they can show in other literature like flyers that they really are there to serve the customer. Failure to address the suggestion box contents could have an adverse effect, but even if suggestions aren’t always taken, customers may still feel more loyalty to companies by being given the power to suggest, praise, and censure.
Social media and Web 2.0 applications have taken the suggestion box to a different level, helping organizations gauge customer interaction on a variety of fronts at a variety of times. Many websites offer many ways to make a comment, ask a question or report problems with use. Some sites also have surveys that can be taken before, during or after use that can be analyzed to find methods of increasing customer satisfaction. These tools work best if they’re relatively brief and easy to use. If all it takes to report trouble on a website is the click of a button, chances are that the button will be clicked more often.
Businesses that use any form of survey in place of the suggestion box need to be aware of two factors. First, they will likely get the most responses from people who are strongly opposed or in support of a business practice. This is a self-selected survey and most people without strong feeling one way or the other will not take the time to fill these out. Therefore, results have to be viewed as representing extreme points of view.
Second, any form has to be short. Most people won’t take long surveys because it wastes time, and there are too many companies making similar requests. By making something short and possibly offering an incentive, such as a discount, customers may more readily comply with an invitation to rate the company or offer suggestions.
Great ideas can come from anywhere, and smart business owners will take advantage of this to improve their bottom line. You may have no shortage of helpful suggestions (and some that might be less than helpful) when you first open your business, but that well will eventually dry up. Profitable companies are always open to change, but the challenge is often finding the right direction for the change to go. Putting up a suggestion box, either for your employees or your customers, is one sure way to get a creative mix of ideas to consider.
Creating an Employee Suggestion System
Want to create a loyal workforce? Give your employees a sense of belonging and the feeling that you value their input. Workers who feel they are part of a company are naturally less likely to leave than those who are unhappy and feeling isolated. As countless company owners have found, one great way to connect with workers is by implementing an employee suggestion system.
More than the traditional locked wooden box mounted outside the office door, these systems are responsive techniques for encouraging feedback and rewarding great suggestions. You can create a similar program by encouraging your employees to write down suggestions based on their daily observances in the business, and by putting a reward system into effect for those suggestions that you use to good effect.
The advantages of having such a system are twofold: improving employee morale and increasing the possibility of finding great business concepts. When workers see you using their ideas to improve the business, it instills in them a great sense of pride. The rewards are just icing on the cake.
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Employee suggestion systems aren"t all good news, though. They can be a bit labor intensive, especially if you want to give serious thought to every suggestion that comes into the system. Someone must vet these ideas, after all. Also, this system is often a magnet for unhappy or troublemaking employees. Every business owner has met one: the worker who"s never happy and is always complaining, regardless of the circumstances. This person is bad enough for morale when left alone with the group; adding her contributions to the suggestion system can waste time better spent on legitimate attempts to help.
Asking the Public for Suggestions
Every successful business was built on giving the customer what he wanted or needed. Even if you have a fabulous bottom line, your customers" needs will change over time. If you want to get ahead of the curve and change in time to take advantage of their new needs, you need to find out what they want. The best way to find this out is to ask them.
The traditional customer suggestion box has all but disappeared, to be replaced by various systems online. From classic review sites like Yelp! and TripAdvisor to dedicated pages on company websites, businesses are taking their suggestion requests to homes and mobile devices.
Set up any system for gathering customer thoughts and you"ll most likely end up with more ideas than you can use. The comparatively large size of the internet guarantees you"ll have more people looking at your site and possibly willing to contribute. You"re likely to get suggestions from people of all ages, cultures and financial backgrounds, giving you a better chance at finding unique business ideas. Customers are generally happy to give you their thoughts for free, as well, and are happy with a small reward if you decide to implement any of their suggestions.
Setting up a system for customer suggestions isn"t all positive, though. Sifting through the larger amounts of material you find online can take up a lot of time and mental effort. The internet can be completely anonymous, making malicious suggestion writers a real possibility. It"s likely you"ll get a certain percentage of trolls and people trying to be funny, mixed in with the serious customers, and you"ll have to weed them out before considering any suggestions. Finally, in this litigious world, it"s a great idea to put a legal disclaimer on all suggestion boxes open to the public, stating that any idea left on your page immediately becomes your property. Give out surprise rewards if you want, but never give anyone the expectation that they deserve a part of your success.
By Nikki Tait
Three years ago, American Freight-ways, an Arkansas haulage company, had a little wooden
"suggestions box". Its 13,300 staff dropped in about one offering a month. But things have changed. It now has a contract with an out-sourced, telephone-based employee feedback service - and receives 200 calls a month from its workforce. Suggestions have ranged from how to maintain equipment to the best way to bid for work on certain routes. "All people have to do is pick up a phone - it has been very beneficial," says Mr John Sherman, rice-president for "people management". The person behind In Touch is Feter Lilienthal, a Minneapolis businessman. The concept is simplicity itself vet clients as varied as Pillsbury, Chase Manhattan, Arthur Andersen Consulting and Coca-Cola have nothing but praise.
In Touch provides a freecall number, which the client"s employees can dial at any time. Messages are then transcribed verbatim and forwarded to the company"s executives within one
working day. For companies with 5,000 employees or more, In Touch is will provide a monthly breakdown of calls, highlighting areas of concern, and so on. It can also provide some foreign language services - Spanish, for example. It is successful, says Mr Lilienthal, partly because the service is independent and, unlike typical in-house communication systems, callers can remain anonymous.
Having watched tens of companies implement the system, Mr Lilienthal says it is almost impossible to predict what the response will be. But he notes that there is often a quiet interval at the out-
set; while employees wait to see whether messages will he taken seriously. That is followed by a
period when minor, bottled-up grievances emerge. Finally, once the system is established, the number of calls typically falls away, and their value increases. This, too, is confirmed by clients. Pillsbury, which began using the service in the early 1990s, shortly after it was acquired by Britain"s
Grand Metropolitan, says it still receives about 50 calls a month.
Mr Lilienthal has a couple of tips for anyone introducing the system. First, make sure the service is relatively unrestricted, and not advertised as a "complaint" line. Second, convince workers that calls will be taken seriously. American Freightways, for example, promises to get back to all
employees who leave their name within ten days. Executives to whom the messages are forwarded
are given five days to respond. Pillsbury makes a point of publicising the most relevant messages, together with responses, via its in-house newspaper or internal e-mail system.
from the Financial Times
1. Look through the whole article and put these paragraph headings into the correct order.
a) Typical response patterns after the system is introduced
b) How the system works
c) Hints on how to introduce the system
d) A new system for employee suggestions
2. True or false?
a) American Freightways is based in Arkansas.
b) Before, the suggestions scheme received no suggestions at all.
c) The new suggestions scheme is run in-house.
d) Employees make suggestions by e-mail.
e) The system is hard to use.
f) American Freightways" vice-president for people management thinks that the system has been very useful.
g) On the whole, other clients for the system have been satisfied, but they have made some criticisms.
3. Find expressions that mean the same as those in italics.
a) In Touch gives a number that people can call without paying.
b) What the callers say is then written down word for word.
c) They are sent to the company"s managers.
d) In Touch will give details of the numbers of different calls.
e) In Touch will give details of the things that a company"s employees are particularly worried about or interested in.
f) Callers do not have to give their names.
4. Put these phases for the system into the order they may typically occur.
a) a phase with a moderate number of calls
b) a phase with a high number of calls
c) a phase with a low number of calls
5. Now match each phase in Question 4 to typical employee reactions for those phases.
a) The system settles down, and people call less often, but what they have to say is more useful to the company.
b) Employees hesitate to use the system because they don"t know if it will work.
c) Employees call more frequently, often to complain about things that have annoyed them for a long time.
6. Which of these hints to managers for making the system successful is not mentioned?
a) Don"t say that the system is mainly for making complaints.
b) Make the system relatively open for anyone to use.
c) You should promise not to try to find the people who call without giving their names.
d) You should respond to messages within a particular time.
e) Publicise the most important messages and their responses.
f) Where relevant, you should get the appropriate manager to respond to messages.
Date: 2014-12-29 ; view: 1110
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Обсуждаемые в этой статье инструменты являются частью спецификации Web Forms 2 , которая будет интегрирована в черновик HTML5 . (Вам нужно использовать последнюю версию Opera, предпочтительно 9.5 , чтобы увидеть примеры в действии. К сожалению, на переднем крае технологий нам нужно делать оговорки касательно браузера.)
Комбо-боксы (input list)
Давайте сначала рассмотрим, как HTML5 работает с комбо-боксами.В старых браузерах эта разметка деградирует в простое текстовое поле ввода. В новых агентах, поддерживающих HTML5, вы сможете выбрать одно из предопределенных значений (в дополнение к возможности ввести произвольный текст). Эта функциональность очень похожа, например, на предлагаемую почтовыми клиентами или адресной строкой браузера. Если вам нужно именно это, но ещё вы хотите видеть в старых браузерах обычный выпадающий список (select) с вариантами, можете использовать такую разметку (в пример добавлен контекст):
Браузеры с поддержкой атрибута list и элемента datalist из HTML5 не будут отображать элемент datalist со всем его содержимым. Вместо этого они будут использовать содержимое элементов option для заполнения комбо-бокса. Старые браузеры отобразят содержимое элемента datalist и позволят пользователю использовать либо текстовое поле, либо выпадающий список.
Внешний источник для datalist
Другая интересная особенность заключается в том, что подсказки могут быть взяты из внешнего XML-файла. Он должен отдаваться с медиа-типом application/xml и выглядеть приблизительно так:Содержимое этого элемента select заменит содержимое любого элемента datalist, ссылающегося на файл, за исключением случая, когда у select атрибут type имеет значение incremental - тогда его содержимое будет не заменять существующие варианты, а дополнять их. Вы можете подключить внешний файл foo вот так:
(Кстати, у элемента select в HTML5 тоже есть атрибут data.)
Динамический комбо-бокс
Мы рассмотрели комбо-боксы и способ заполнять их, используя внешний файл. Все, что нам теперь осталось до эмуляции Google Suggest в HTML5 - это ожидать события в комбо-боксе, и обращаться к маленькому серверному скрипту для динамического создания файла, который будет источником данных для элемента datalist. Чтобы сделать это обычными методами, вам нужно было бы создать свое собственное «выпадающее меню» со списком вариантов, использовать XMLHttpRequest для получения внешних данных, написать код, заполняющий этими данными меню - немалый труд, согласитесь.Так какое событие мы можем использовать? В Web Forms 2 появилось новое событие input, которое уже поддерживается несколькими браузерами, включая Opera. Событие запускается после того, как пользователь вводит текст с клавиатуры. Если он быстро печатает много символов, запускается только одно событие. Подключение обработчика к комбо-боксу слегка усложняет код:
oninput=«list.data = "?w=" + encodeURIComponent(value)»>
Легко видеть, что обработчик события input изменяет list.data. Атрибут list поля ввода ссылается на элемент datalist по id, поэтому данные берутся именно из этого datalist. Все, что нам осталось сделать, чтобы загрузить данные с нужного адреса - это изменить атрибут data. Новый адрес - это строка?w плюс строка, введенная пользователем, которую мы кодируем для использования в URI при помощи глобальной функции encodeURIComponent. Так что, если пользователь введёт foo, запрос будет отправлен по адресу?w=foo (этот URI работает относительно страницы, на которой выполняется скрипт). Серверный скрипт получит этот URI, найдет текстовый файл с возможными вариантами для введенной строки, и потом вернет для заполнения комбо-бокса XML-файл, содержащий эти варианты. Всё это происходит динамически, поэтому как только вы измените искомый текст в текстовом поле, серверный скрипт обработает новые данные и отправит новый XML-файл, изменяя содержимое элемента datalist.
Я сделал рабочий пример этого для того, чтобы вы могли попробовать самостоятельно: загрузите файлы , или проверьте готовый пример в действии .
Файлы для этого примера:
- список подсказок, разделенных переводами строки, в файле suggest.txt - он будет читаться серверным скриптом в поисках подходящих вариантов;
- Python-скрипт article-example-suggest.py, который ищет в текстовом файле введенную пользователем строку, и потом возвращает XML с результатами поиска; также в этом файле описаны элементы input и datalist, которые мы обсуждали выше.
import os
qs = os.environ["QUERY_STRING"]
# The page as shown by default
main="""Content-Type:texthtml;charset=UTF-8\n
"""
If qs=="":
print main
else:
# If a query string was provided we need to provide an XML file with
# options filtered using the user input
import sys
print "Content-type: application/xml"
print "Cache-control: no-cache"
print ""
sys.stdout.write("")
