Dear Community,
We hope you are enjoying being part of the Online Community and all the support it offers.
Some of you may have seen posts or messages from the staff moderator team asking for feedback to be submitted in a particular way. I thought it would be helpful to explain why we ask this and more importantly what we do with it.
Why we ask for feedback in this way.
We know that people want to post about their experiences with the Online Community. When people use their posts to comment on the function of the Online Community, it can divert the community’s focus away from its purpose of providing peer support. This can make it harder for people to find answers to their questions about stroke. People have told us this in their feedback.
Everyone’s experience is important to us, and we want to make sure that you feel listened to. Following a format helps us to understand what you are telling us. We need two main things.
- For you to provide as much factual detail as you can.
- Let us know how this affects your experience of using the Online Community.
What we do with your feedback
Once we receive your feedback, we record it on a tracking system which allows us to group similar issues.
As a team we meet monthly to review how the community is running. This is when we go through your feedback in detail and look at any trends or themes in what you are telling us .
How we action your feedback
Whilst we are not able to action all feedback, we do have a conversation to explore what/ if any changes can be made.
You may think this is a simple process. We have to:
- Decide as a team what to prioritise.
- Assess the impact on the community as a whole. This includes having a rationale, risk assessing and testing the changes to ensure we have reduced the impact.
- If we find there would be a big impact on people’s experience, we will try to get more feedback from the community on it.
- Once a decision is made to continue, we will implement the changes and update you.
How will we communicate your feedback.
We will tell you about any changes that will affect your experience of using the Online Community. Depending on the size of the changes we will communicate this either in this space, by using a banner or by email. If it is a significant change, we may use all three channels.
As some of you may be aware I also oversee Online Activities. I will be adopting some of the ways in which we respond to feedback there, and bringing it to the Community. Each year I will put together all the feedback that we have been able to act on for that year which will be shared with you all. Please see here as an example.
If you cannot give feedback in this way.
I understand that this way of giving feedback might be difficult for some. As I mentioned earlier. Everyone’s experience is important to us, and we want to make sure that everyone feels listened to. Please contact the service desk if you would like to give your feedback in a way that is right for you.
Next week I will update you on some of the things the team are working on in response to your feedback.
Thank you for taking the time to read.
Nicola