How do I Respond Well to Stories?

One of most popular ‘How to sessions’ is the ‘How to respond and demonstrate impact’ webinar, so I thought I would address this with some up to date guidelines on how to do just that. Whether you are a new responder or someone who has been responding for a while and looking for some inspiration, responding well is one of the most fundamental aspects of being a subscriber. One of the key elements to giving a good response is to firstly put yourself in their shoes. Think about what type of response 'you' would like to receive if you had taken the time to tell your story. For more inspiration why not sign up for one of the online 'How to sessions'??

The key thing that makes Care Opinion so unique is that we offer the ability to encourage a constructive conversation between the author and yourselves. At Care Opinion, we believe if an author has taken the time to tell their story they should receive a personal and timely response, and we are always trying to think of new ways to ensure we support & encourage responders to give high quality responses to their on-line feedback.

How to Post a Response

Care Opinion sends you an email alert when a story relevant to your subscription is published. This email includes a link to the story; click this link to view the story on the Care Opinion website where you will be automatically logged in.

For security reasons, this will only happen when you click the link the first time; if you click the link again or pass it on to someone then you will need to manually log yourself in again by clicking “log in” in the top right corner of the page.

You can easily tell when you’re logged in as there will be a green navigation drawer in the top left of your screen.

                                                                                  

If you are struggling to post a response and the green drawer isn’t there, this means you need to log in.

Once you have logged in and read the story, scroll down the page and underneath the story you will see a box that invites you to post “your reply”.

If you are a subscription ‘Administrator’ you will be able to post a response yourself or on behalf of another staff member, by selecting ‘another member’ and begin to type their name. Then you need to answer the question “how would you like to sign your response?” You have 3 option to choose from, we would always encourage you to choose Name, Job title, Organisation, as this is what we call signing off with a “full signature” and is much more personal.

You can use the options in the top of the box to edit the text, add a link or photo and undo/redo.

After composing your response, you are then asked to choose from 3 options related to whether the feedback has resulted in any change. If you have already made a change relevant to your feedback or you are planning on doing so then we encourage you to select either the “we’ve made a change” or the"we're preparing to make a change" button or, alternatively, if, for example your feedback is positive or doesn't require a change you can simply select the“not at the moment” option. Select wisely though, don’t promise to make a change if this is not true"!

Finally tick “Your consent” and you’ll see the green tick to confirm you have submitted your response.

Once you have submitted a response you will have half an hour to make any changes to your response then it will either be read by a Care Opinion moderator or be made public.

When you start using Care Opinion, your responses will be read and approved by one of our moderators. This will mean a slight delay in the response being made public. Once you are more confident with Care Opinion responses will be automatically approved. This means they will be published after half an hour editing window has closed

 It’s as simple as that, if you have any other questions– give us a call!