Did we really have a Christmas - it seems such a long time ago now - still it goes to show that time really does fly when you're enjoying yourself!
Welcome to yet another R.E.D. newsletter full of exciting news, information and innovative ideas - yes, really!
To Be or Not To Be ?
OH USER GROUP USER GROUP WHERE FOR ART THOU USER GROUP?
Wouldn't it be wonderful if a group of users could get together and discuss issues which they are facing with others who have had similar successes or confusions?
Yes? Lots of you have said you'd like to meet others, but so far, nobody has volunteered to organise a meeting. ‘Shame’ I hear you cry but it's true. One kind user has offered a lovely convenient, central London venue, and we would be happy to lend our full support to anybody willing to have a bash at organising it. We are very much in favour, of the idea of a user group but we can do little ourselves to get the ball rolling, after all, a user group is supposed to be independent, so we can't actually do it ourselves. You might even enjoy doing it!
Easter Bunny’s Helper
The Easter Bunny’s helper has come to R.E.D. just in time for a huge influx of work. Her name is Sue and we welcome her with open arms! Sue will be with us for a few months and is fully au fait with the R.E.D. system and can answer support calls, so please do use her knowledge.
BACS
As from January 1998, all BACS activities will have be done by modem. No longer will the trusty disk do the job! Special modem software is needed to communicate with the BACS modem, and there are a number of companies supplying this. We will not be producing a modem communications package ourselves as the BACS specification is based on IBM mainframe technology and is hopelessly over complicated. We have already designed output from R.E.D. software to conform with the specifications
provided by Albany Software for use with their program called Albacs. Sad to relate, not all the BACS software requires the same output design, some may even be happy with a disk, so please, don't leave finding out about what you are going to do to the last minute, get your investigations underway! BACS do provide a list of approved suppliers.
Mythical Monday
You've no idea how many users’ tapes and disks we get from somebody called Monday! Please may we ask that you label both your tapes and the boxes they come in with at least a clue as to what it is! Imagine our confusion when we search in our temporary tape storage to re-read or send back your precious tape only to find maybe ten tapes from Mythical Monday and nothing with your name on!
BackUps
Still on the subject of tapes. We really can't tell you how important it is that you have a good back-up policy. Annual, long-term, medium term, short-term and off site. Also remember that you need to do test restores, just to make sure everything is working as it should. Bully and badger your IT department to help you.
Bags Lighter
If you use Presstream or Mailsort, the health and safety regulations have changed, so the maximum weight for a bag is now 11kg, not 15kg. You should have got notification from the Post Office, so please don't forget to change the parameters in your program.
Windows NT
We have recently bought a new server for a Windows NT network so that we can be sure to give optimum support to our new clients who are not running on Novell. It is an exciting project, though a little frustrating at times to start learning from scratch, but we're getting there! This means we now have THREE servers - this is getting ridiculous!
Arcserve
If we had a pound for every call we had about Btrieve settings and Arcserve, we could buy a large R.E.D. elephant! Our programs and Arcserve both use Btrieve, but Arcserve will automatically change the Btreive settings on the server without telling you when it is first installed. So, please remember to go back to them and reset them afterwards. Also, try to make sure that Arcserve does not change the settings as it starts up. Many thanks - really, we don’t have space for an elephant!
Windows Module
Work on this progresses apace and we expect our first installation in the summertime. It will almost certainly be a Windows 95 version, and we are very excited about it. But, fear not, our Windows version will be using the same underlying code as the DOS program, so existing users will definitely not get left behind or ignored.
New Spring Collection!
More of a Good Thing
We know that there are those among you that are running short of demographics and we have been working to implement new extended demographics. This includes 5 more demographics of the type which already exist on the Address record, and up to 65 more new ‘extended’ demographics! Do call us if this of interest to you.
Questionnaires
Listen up, this is really exciting - well, I think so! - imagine sending out questionnaires, and every time you send one, it had a different set of questions on it. The implication of this is an almost unlimited number of different questions. Then imagine getting your responses and putting them against that questionnaire, and entering the answers at the same time IN THE SUBS PROGRAM. You are now imagining the same thing we imagined here at R.E.D., and which is now available in the program. If it catches your interest, ring us for details.
Sub Demographics
Historically, all the demographics sat on the addresses, and this was very sensible and fine. But time moves on and so does your program. There are now four demographics available on the subscription screen, two which are program wide, and two which are specific and can be set publication by publication. If you think these might be useful, talk to us.
Read Only Users
It is now possible for read-only folk (and others) to view the entire contents of a form letter design. It’s so easy, just view the letter and push the up and down arrow keys. No longer does one need to press Modify first! Oooh, nice!
European Address
Oh wouldn't it be luvverly...if you could type in European addresses in the standard way, but when you come to print that address out, the order of the lines changed to match the postal format of each particular country. Yes it would, and yes, you can!
Speedier Responses
Those of you using the Reader Enquiry Module will, I am sure, be delighted with the new super speedy printing option for the responses, be they in letter or label form. Watch out for the new question on output!
Double Take!
Have your advertisers asked for one set of responses to be sent to two different places - themselves and a mailing house, for example? This is now beautifully possible, so if this idea whets your appetite, just talk to us.
A Rose by Any Other Name......
What does the term ‘Customer Service’ mean to you? Does your company have a Customer Services department, and is it you? Do others in your organisation recognise the customer service element of the job you do?
In a very fast publishing world where new journals/magazines are literally sprouting up overnight and where competition is extremely fierce - what puts your publication at the front of a selection list by Mr/Ms Reader? The content? the quality of content? the price? the reader benefits - freebies ? A friendly voice, or getting a magazine the next day may be all it takes for a customer to view your publication in a positive light without even opening the cover.
The majority of our users view themselves as ‘in circulation’. This is obviously true, but can result in your job being given the profile within your organisation as a whole. How much of your departments daily workload is taken up with actually servicing your customers? We suspect, the answer is ‘most’.
Amending a subscription record; an address; handling a payment, a query - all these tasks can be seen as your usual procedures. For the customer of course, it is not the procedure, but the individual touch which matters. How important it is then, to get things right first time, every time.
That ‘individual touch’ could be called ‘customer service’ and if so, how you do ensure that every single action or telephone call has that ‘individual touch’ time after time after time?
That is what ‘Customer Services Procedures’ are all about. How to make sure every type of task or query is sorted out in a logical way from start to finish within a time scale considered acceptable to your department.
You probably already have procedures and time limits in operation, but they could be written down in a Customer Services Charter to formalise the targets your department works to, for example;
By having this type of knowledge, along with a set of procedures and targets to follow and fulfill, it becomes possible to monitor how your department is doing in terms of efficiency and response times; to anticipate busy periods; to check the distribution of workloads and to identify and ease genuine bottle-necks.
Every company will have different answers to questions like these, but it is asking the right questions of yourself that makes the difference between a great department and a good one.
And finally... if you draw up your own ‘Customer Services Charter’ and put it on display in your office everyone will see what a wonderful job you are doing!!!