1. Overview
2. What you can do?
3. How are ratings calculated?

1. Overview

Member organisations have access to online (i.e. they are accessible via any computer with Internet access) administration tools 24 hours a day, seven days a week. These tools allow the member organisation to manage all aspects of their feedback from customers and/or staff. For example, new locations can be added or closed, customers can be added or taken away, and customers can be moved from one location to another. The tools also provide access to the current ratings, by location or management centre.

RateUs uses the latest in SQL Server technology, this is essentially an industry standard database which holds and manipulates the information about each organisation. Each organisation can only access their own information via a unique reference number and password, this can also be limited to named people within the organisation. Because no personal information is held about customers on the system (i.e. they are only identified by reference number and password) there are minimal data protection issues.

Just as each organisation can only access their own set of tools and ratings (unless they choose to put them live on the site), each customer (or their advocate) can only access their own questionnaire and suggestion box.

TOP

2. What you can do?

As stated above, the tools allow each member organisation to:

• define their organisational structure (i.e. their different locations or management centres).
• add customers (or optionally staff) to each location.
• move customers between locations.
• remove customers (when they cease to be involved with the organisation).
• define which measures they want to receive alerts for (by default the system may alert the organisation if an individual scores certain measures very low - i.e. within the care sector there are fixed alerts for respect and complaints).

In addition the tools provide live data on:

• the current ratings for the whole organisation against all 6 measures.
• the current ratings for each location or management centre (NOTE - if a location has 3 or fewer customers the ratings will not show against the location, this is to protect confidentiality. The ratings for this location, however, will contribute to the overall organisational rating. Alerts will also be generated - see below).
• current alerts - if any individual customer has scored a specified measure 3 or lower an alert will be generated. Because the system does not identify individuals (i.e. their views only contribute to an overall ratings) this ensures that problems within locations are not missed.

• what comments customers send through the suggestion box system.

TOP

3. How are ratings calculated?

Ratings are calculated by combining the responses from all customers (or staff) within a specified location or management centre. Each of the 12 questions are scored from one to ten. Also, for the final organisation rating, the percentage of responses are factored in. This means that the higher the percentage of customers responding, the more the final rating is adjusted up.

TOP