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Wild Strawberry Communications has helped the Federation of Small Businesses (FSB) to understand the effectiveness of its communications with members. In the process we have identified the potential for huge savings and greater efficiency.
Wild Strawberry Communications won the tender for a communications audit, working in a consortium with two other specialist agencies. With 200,000 members the FSB is the prime lobbying organisation for this vital segment of the UK economy. It has been growing very rapidly and our remit was to identify areas where the organisation was communicating effectively, best practices, communication problems and how communications could be improved.
Amongst its many findings, our audit quantified members' and employees' satisfaction with current communications, their preferences for receiving information and identified which of the FSB's communications are most – and least – valued.
The audit ran from March to May 2006 and used a staged approach:
Information was gathered via face-to-face and telephone interviews, and via telephone, email and web-based surveys. All data was reviewed for statistical validity.
Analysing the findings, developing recommendations and writing the final report was completed in two weeks. We presented key findings and recommendations to the FSB Executive Council in July 2006.
The report made a number of recommendations covering member and employee satisfaction, channels used, information flows, strategy and planning, monitoring, communications' accessibility and usability, budgetary control and mailing lists. It included proposals that could yield huge savings in communications spend and ensure the FSB gets greater value from its investment.
Following intensive discussion, the FSB is following up several key recommendations. Members are likely to start seeing the first benefits during 2007.