Recent changes to the Hull Daily Mail reflect a continuing drive to please the reader. Reporter Kathryn Cecile explains how the Customers First programme helps staff achieve this goal.
With 201,000 readers every day, the Hull Daily Mail undeniably has many pleased customers, but we recognise that we need to continue to strive ever harder to please them.
We want to give our thousands of readers and advertisers the best possible service and, in order to do this, we are constantly looking at ways to improve the way we work.
The Mail has launched a major programme, called Customers First, to help us to achieve our aims.
The philosophy of the programme is very simple – we want to please our customers, not just satisfy them. And we aim to do this by putting our customers first.
This attitude now underpins every management initiative, editorial decision and advertising resolution.
For the editorial team, the most important customers are our readers. We aim to provide coverage of quality and depth in line with what you, our readers, have told us you want from your newspaper.
Several guiding principles have been identified to help us achieve this. They include:
Following the launch of the Customers First programme, we carried out detailed research to gauge how pleased our readers were with the newspaper.
The results were positive – 51 per cent were pleased with the Mail and 24 very pleased. But there were a number of issues to address in order to increase even further the percentage of pleased and very pleased readers and to reduce the numbers who were displeased with what we do.
Next, we held a series of sessions involving a cross-section of readers, Editor John Meehan, editorial managers and specialist journalists. We called these sessions Customer Circles.
The meetings were a chance for readers to discuss the key subjects we cover in the paper, such as health, education, community issues and sport.
They were asked what they thought of our reporting, what they would like to see more of and what they disliked.
Education reporter Tracy Fletcher took part in one of the sessions, joining a group of readers to discuss how we cover education issues.
Among the people attending were parents, a teacher and a postgraduate student.
Tracy said: “One of the most important things about the job of a reporter is staying in touch with the views and feelings of the people we write about in order to understand the core issues that affect their lives.
“It was a valuable exercise to meet some of our readers face to face to find out directly how they see the work we do and how we can improve it.”
Based on the feedback from readers who took part in the meetings, an action plan was drawn up to develop editorial content and ensure our readers are pleased or very pleased with the service we provide.
The plan has been distributed to all editorial staff and journalists use it on a daily basis to ensure we continue to improve the service we provide. Regular progress reports are issued to keep things moving forward.
Editor John Meehan said: “Our readers may have noticed quite a few changes in the newspaper over recent weeks and months. These changes relate to how we cover key subjects and how we present that coverage. They have all resulted from listening to our readers and responding to what they have told us they want.
“It’s a continuing process. We intend to keep talking to readers and hearing at first hand what they think of the newspaper and the changes they want to see. It’s exciting to see our customers shaping the development of their newspaper.”
An amazing feat of teamwork
The principles of Customers First are being applied to relationships between departments at the Mail.
It is an amazing feat of teamwork simply to get the newspaper out to our readers six days a week. There can’t be many businesses that produce an entirely new product every day.
But we want to build on our strengths to do an even better job and provide an even better service to our customers.
Each department is a link in the chain – from reporters gathering the news, to the newsdesk, through to the page editors, who design pages and edit the stories, through the production areas, our delivery network, and, finally, to your front door.
We have a tagline that summarises how Customers First works within the company – “you do, we can, they buy”. This recognises that there are internal customers within the company as well as external customers outside of it.
“You do, we can, they buy” simply means that if every individual does their job to the best of their ability, their team or the company as a whole can produce excellent goods and services which our customers will be pleased to purchase. Recently members of the newsdesk team met with the page editors to discuss improving the service they provide each other.
The news desk is central to the newsroom, overseeing and filtering stories from reporters to the pages of the newspaper. The page editors place the stories and pictures into the design of the page, giving them headlines and checking for errors.
The two teams must work closely together to ensure readers are pleased with their copy of the Mail and the meetings they held gave them chance to identify a number of ways to improve this relationship.
The philosophy of Customers First is becoming a way of life at the Mail and we are constantly reassessing the way we work in order to address our customers needs.
Scheme affects every department
Customers First affects every department of the Mail, the way we work with people outside the company and the way we work with each other.
The advertising department has been looking at ways it can continue to please its customers for the past few months.Advertising director Judy Ward said: “The aim of Customers First in advertising is to provide a better service to our advertising customers.
“We try to answer their needs and sometimes that involves changing the way we work internally. We are flexible about that and are examining the way we work. We recognise we need to be led by the needs of our external customers.”
Since the introduction of Customers First and feedback from advertisers, the department has updated its sales training and employed sales administrators.
The new administrative support staff enable sales people and managers to spend more time meeting with their clients and providing a more effective and more efficient service.
Judy said: “We ask ourselves whether our products answer customers’ needs and what might be changed to please current and new customers by getting them the best response possible from their ads.”
Reproduced courtesy of the Hull Daily Mail
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