Episodes
Thursday Aug 20, 2020
Customer and Stakeholder Survey
Thursday Aug 20, 2020
Thursday Aug 20, 2020
We talk to James Downes, Head of Product for Companies House, about the importance of customer insight and transforming our customer facing digital products and services.
Transcript
Gary Townley: Hello and welcome to this podcast from Companies House. My name is Gary Townley. I am part of the communications team here at Companies House. Probably most of you know us, but for those who don't know who we are, Companies House are the government agency who register, dissolve and keep company records and make those records available to the public. Our sponsoring department is BEIS, the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy.
We have four locations, Edinburgh, Belfast, London and here in Cardiff, where we are broadcasting from this morning, so thank you for joining us. I'm delighted to be joined by James Downes, Head of Product here at Companies House. So I’ll let James introduce himself.
James Downes: Hello. Yes, as you say I'm James. I'm head of the product team here at Companies House. We look after all digital products that are customer facing. So everything from the filing products where people can file the documents say, incorporate new companies, dissolve companies and so on, through to the other side of the product spectrum where people can view company information to our search and data products.
GT: All available from our website?
JD: All available from our website, yes.
GT: Okay, so products, as well as we got people filing, people inspecting, people providing information. So we've introduced a survey recently that's been going for about 6 weeks. So what's the purpose of the survey?
JD: So the survey is designed to help us improve basically. That means improve our products and services that we just mentioned, but also actually improve how we do surveys in the future. We've always you know, we've always wanted to get the insight from our customers and want to know what they think about us and how satisfied they are with us and we've done it in a number of different ways. What we're trying to do this time, is find a much more consistent way that we can regularly monitor, you know, feel the pulse of our customers and stakeholders.
GT: Okay, and who’re we looking to take part in this survey?
JD: So anybody who use our services. So we've already mentioned filers. So companies, directors, secretaries and accountants that file documents to Companies House and obviously then those that the consume company information. So they might be people doing it for their own personal reasons, looking at companies, but also what we call data consumers. People like credit reference agencies, transparency groups and things like that who are consuming our data in bulk. May be using our API, or using our bulk products to do more with that information.
But also stakeholders. So we've got lots of people who have a stake in what we do here at Companies House. They may be formation agents, big accountancy firms, the trade, press, even people from within government. They have an interest in what we do. I'd very much like to hear from them too.
GT: Okay, so everyone who has contact with us,
JD: Absolutely.
GT: And who’s been dealing with us, right?
JD: We decided to run it for 3 months. What we wanted to do is get the biggest sample possible so that we really covered all the different groups that I just mentioned.
GT: And the numbers so far are looking quite positive?
JD: Yeah, we've got a really good sample. So we’ve certainly got over 27,000 responses so far which is excellent. It gives us a really good sample on which we can we can do some analysis and really get a good understanding of people's opinions and levels of satisfaction.
GT: Okay, so lots of people taking part. Any specific areas that you know, we want more people from a particular area to come forward and take part?
JD: Yeah the stakeholders in particular. Having had a quick look at the data, we know that we've got a good representative sample, and we know that we don't have as many stakeholders as we do people that search or file, but we'd still like to hear more from stakeholders because what we do is important to them. It’s important that they have a say in any future direction that we might take.
GT: Yes it’s their chance to tell us what to do isn't it?
JD: Yeah.
GT: Okay, so it's going to end in about 3 weeks time. So 3 weeks for people to get on board and fill in that survey for us. So one of the next stages once it closes, what's going to happen with those results?
JD: So we will we will do some analysis and really sort of understand the data that we've got because as I said it's quite a large data set. We’ll will work with our colleagues in the analysis and corporate insight section. We've got some statisticians there that will make sure that our methodology and our analytical methodology is robust. Then what we'll do is, we'll obviously present that internally and then we'll look to publish that information to the outside world as well. Because we believe it's you know, in terms of transparency, it's good to share what we've learned.
GT: Yeah I was going to say that. Are the results going to be published. They’ll be available on our website, I take it?
JD: They will be available from our website. It won’t be immediately after the service ended because there does need to be some rigour in terms of the way that we publish that information, our statisticians are happy with the quality of the way we’ve sampled and analysed the data.
GT: Oh, and we keep mentioning our website, so I suppose I'd better give the website address. It’s www.gov.uk/companieshouse and indeed, if you want to take part in the survey go to that address. It's on our front page. It's a lovely sort of purply, bluey sort of logo. Click on there and it’ll take you straight through to the survey.
Now, I believe if you do take part, there’s a little incentive that we might be giving away.
JD: That's right. Yes, there is. We’re going to be doing a free draw for an iPad Pro. It's a lovely bit of kit, obviously brand new. And yes, that will be going to a lucky winner. There are some rules on that. So it does have to be based in Great Britain and unfortunately, it's not available to employees of Companies House or BEIS.
GT: That's sad that we can't take part in that. Okay, so the results will be published and obviously we’ll be acting on those results in some way, some shape or fashion.
JD: Absolutely. Yeah, so, you know, we're sort of heading into a new stage of Companies House where we're looking to transform. Much of the feedback and actually much of the reason for doing this in the first place is to help shape that transformation and really understand. One of our strands of transformation is brilliant services. So a lot of what we learn from the survey, will be used by Companies House as a whole but specifically the product team, the customer insight people and so on in order to be able to prioritise and really understand what matters to people.
GT: Ok brilliant and the survey has been promoted on all our social channels. So it's on Twitter. It's on Facebook. It's on LinkedIn. So you will see little logos little animations etc promoting the service, so do take part if you're listening in. If you do want to contact us, our telephone number is 0303 1234 500 and you can email us on enquiries@companieshouse.gov.uk if you need to get in touch with us.
Now. I’ve also noticed from our website, reading the other day, that we're looking for people to join the Companies House user panel.
JD: Yes.
GT: That's another feature, we're sort of trying to promote as well.
JD: Yes the user panel. It sounds a bit grand but ultimately it's about people giving us permission to contact them for future research. So that might mean surveys from time to time, we do individual surveys. But also when we're looking specifically at individual services, we like to do a lot more in-depth research with customers. So that could be anything from, again from a survey to a telephone interview to even some usability testing. We do usability testing remotely and we also do it from our usability lab here in Cardiff.
GT: Yeah. I've seen the usability suite that's quite a good bit of kit. We call people in to use that do we?
JD: Yeah, it's a great facility. It’s used almost every day. And what we do is, we ask people to come, so members of the public, customers from all different customer groups, and we will basically test our services with them. All the way through us designing one of our services right from when we've got, you know, sort of basic prototypes up through to finished versions. We’ll continually test how usable that is to make sure that people can get it right first time.
GT: Yeah, and as part of the survey process once we've got this information in, obviously we’ll tailor our tools and get people in to test these new tools as well.
JD: Absolutely. Yeah, it's about sort of expanding that pool of people that we can work with to make sure that we can deliver the best services possible.
GT: That's all right, isn't it? So, I think that's about it from the podcast. I'll just get you to take a card from this magic pack here, just to finish off
JD: Right.
GT: So any card, any chance, okay, read it out and give us your answer on that.
JD: It says ‘hypothetically speaking, if you could teleport anywhere right now, where would you go?’ That’s a difficult question. If I could teleport anywhere right now, where would I go. I think I would probably go, boring answer but, I'd probably go home to Pembrokeshire. In this weather, it's absolutely stunning right now.
GT: Brilliant. Okay. Thanks James. So James Downes is Head of Product here. My name's Gary Townley. I'm part of the comms team. So thank you very much for listening. Also join us on all our social channels, get to our website obviously www.gov.uk/companieshouse, 0303 1234 500 is our call line if you want to call us, and enquiries@companieshouse.gov.uk if you want to send us an email. So thank you very much for listening and listen in again for the next one.
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