As a mark of respect, I would like to pay tribute to HRH The Prince Philip who sadly passed away last week. Although Her Majesty, The Queen, has resumed some of her duties already, we know that she relied on the support of her husband through her long reign and in particular, the difficult times they have faced together. Hopefully, her immediate family will rally around her now and going forwards.
Whilst I appreciate that not all agree, I personally think the Royal family are a great asset to the country and are part of what makes Great Britain the country and culture it is. When I was born, Queen Elizabeth was already on the throne and so we have known no different and that probably goes for the majority of the population.
Survey Results
Turning now to our recent survey, may I firstly start with a huge thank you to everyone who took the time to complete the process. The numbers of respondents was overwhelming, which is very much appreciated and hopefully provides us with some valuable feedback that we can put to good use.
Whilst I am able to summarise the main results, I will not make reference to any individual comments, other than to say that it is my intention to reply to everyone but please bear with me as this will take a little while and I will respond in the order that the surveys were completed.
I think the best way to portray the results is to use some pictures and the first two look at the question about using Zoom or other video-based calls for a variety of meetings and you will see that 81% of respondents said they are happy to use Zoom, as you can see in the pie chart.
The bar graph though looks in a little more detail, and tells us that most people are happy to Zoom or similar for general meetings but 74% would prefer to have a face-to-face meeting for annual reviews
Our plan is to employ this approach as far as possible but let me stress that we will always be available for face-to-face meetings and will not be using video calls exclusively.
The next two charts look at how we store our information and could share with you via DropBox. We use DropBox to store all of our client records digitally that would otherwise be filling filing cabinets in the office. This is a highly encrypted system that we use, which has several layers of security, which satisfies the Regulator in this age of Cyber Security concerns.
As you can see from the pie chart, two thirds of respondents would be happy to receive paperwork from us via DropBox and this we will try to adapt for those who would like to use this system going forwards. This will involve us sharing folders and for individuals to set up their own passwords to be able to access the information. For home use, there should be no cost involved with using DropBox.
However, the bar chart suggests that the idea of sharing documents in this way is perhaps not so popular, but we could explore introducing it for people who have said they would be happy to use this method. We need to think about it before acting in any way and I suspect a pilot scheme might be worth looking at.
I will let you know more in due course in this regard.
The last two graphs are looking at a different method of accessing information which would be via a client portal directly into our back-office system. This would enable individuals to have access to all of the information we have saved and to update personal details like change of address etc.
The results are very similar to those for using DropBox, and again, some hesitance in actually using this method.
We are a way off this being possible in any event and we would need to make some updates to the system before launching, but I suspect, this will become more popular over time, particularly as it will also be available as a phone app as well. We will keep you informed as we make progress with this.
Finally on the subject of the survey, I thank you for all of the individual comments, which in themselves were very positive and supportive in the main, but have also given us some areas to review and to learn from and we intend to make the changes and improvements as far as possible to respond to these.
In the next newsletter, I will revert to more current affairs in regard to markets, the economic outlook and of course Covid 19.
We hope you had an enjoyable Easter holiday and let’s hope the weather warms up soon.
As always, take care and we will keep in touch.
Best wishes.
Richard, Chris and Lesley