Feedback That Speaks Volumes
Lord Foster once said that the most successful architects are those who are able to take feedback and use it to improve their designs. It’s an approach that we embrace here at RedBook. For this reason, we have carried out a survey of your views on our services, and we plan to repeat this each year. Here’s how we’ve responded to your most recent recommendations.
Personal Touch
As RedBook continues to expand, we recognise how important it is that we strike the balance between growing our business and maintaining the unique personal touch on which our success is based. While our Partners view our growth positively, some have expressed concerns that our one-to-one approach could be eroded as our staff numbers increase. One of our expert planning consultants cautioned us to be mindful of this and not to become, in his words, “overly corporate”. That’s not our goal either.
In response, our CEO Tom Adams has explained how Redbook’s success stems from the personal touch that was carefully curated and fostered by Sandy Mitchell in the earlier years of the company.
“As our in-house technical expertise grows, and the team expands, our focus will be on maintaining this personal interaction and respecting the value of long-term relationships.”
Together, we’ve come up with measures to ensure this foundation stone of RedBook isn’t diminished as we continue to grow. For example, we’ve collaborated with a behavioural psychologist and designed an onboarding process for all new RedBook team members that embeds our values and reinforces the importance of this personal input to our clients and Partners. We also conduct monthly workshops with the team led by industry experts, including Sandy, which also underline how our relationships with people lie at the heart of our company culture and values.
Project-launch Meetings
Our project briefs have received high praise in the survey and are known to be among the best in the business. However, we’re conscious that project requirements and aspirations can and do often change during the initial stages of a project launch. To address this, several of our Partners have requested that we take a lead immediately after our clients have appointed their team. So, in response, we now plan to host the first post-launch meeting as well as the key stage reviews. We respect and value our Partners’ autonomy hugely, and we believe this commitment from RedBook will assist with the clear definition of project goals and subsequent reviews of the project right up to the point of completion.
Transparency on fees
We believe deeply in the importance of transparency in our fee structure. To this end, Sandy recently wrote an article on our agency-business model which was published in our newsletter and on social media. This highlights how we always communicate our fee structure in person and in writing to clients to ensure their full understanding. So, for example, at our initial meeting with potential clients, our team follows a strict protocol to explain the business model and commission structure.
Feedback
Our Partners have underlined the value to them of receiving feedback from us and we are committed to enhancing our ability to share insights and knowledge with you. As a result, we have introduced two feedback points.
Firstly, after each client pitch, we’ll offer a written response with thoughts, comments and suggestions. This will enable us to share our expertise and we hope it will help our Partners enhance their positioning.
Secondly, we will send short monthly email updates on potential leads and projects.
These are just some of the initiatives we are working on in our goal to continuously improve our service to our partners.
My very warm thanks for your input to our survey, and ongoing support.
Zahra,
Head of Partners.
Zahra@redbookagency.com
