Work Matters: Management Focus - Happy Days are here
Karen Faux
Tuesday, October 19, 2010
A nursery chain asked parents the right questions, with useful results for its services, marketing and in-house training, says Karen Faux.
A competition held in association with a local radio station has proved a fruitful way for nursery chain Happy Days to find out what its potential customers are looking for in their choice of nursery.
The competition ran on Pirate FM throughout September and asked parents for the three most important things they wanted from their nursery. The prize of a year's free childcare at a Happy Days nursery prompted hundreds of listeners to respond online.
Jackie Arthur, chief operations officer at the group, which runs 17 nurseries and one wrap-around-care facility in the south west, reports that the comments are 'fascinating' and will feed into making the business stronger.
'What has come across loud and clear is that parents are very concerned not only with how their children are treated, but how they are treated as well,' she says. 'Respondents said it was very important that staff were warm and welcoming, with the ability to build strong relationships that encompass child and parent. They also emphasised the importance of the feel and ethos of a nursery, and having confidence in professionalism and the ability to communicate.'
Ms Arthur says that the responses are still in the process of being analysed and they will contribute to the group's in-house training programmes. They will also form the basis of a questionnaire that will be distributed to parents across all its settings next year.
Happy Days says it strives to be imaginative in its marketing approaches. Earlier in the year it ran a promotional campaign with Bounty, which provides pregnancy information packs and samples to expectant parents.
Ms Arthur says, 'With our most recent promotion we wanted to create a prize that was valuable enough to attract a high entry rate and reward people for giving us their opinion,' she says. 'We certainly succeeded in that, and the exercise not only provides us with a potential client-base but a mechanism for better understanding the needs of those clients.'
Winner Kathy Clarke from Charleston impressed the judges with her heartfelt response, which stressed the responsibility that nurseries hold.
'We could empathise with Kathy, both in terms of her needs and expectations, and what we aim to deliver at Happy Days in terms of quality and consistency,' says Ms Arthur.
The chain's latest plans include building a new 80-place nursery at Summercourt, just off the A30 commuter road, with work due to start before the end of the year.
