Serving faith communities

I read with interest Charlotte Koelliker's personal profile amongst the election paperwork, in which her personal faith journey clearly plays a significant part in her life.

As a co-operative, our membership is open to those of all faiths, and those of none.

The faith communities throughout our country have a passion for the people within their communities and the ethical and environmental standards that the Phone Co-Op works to would be applauded by the majority of faith communities throughout our country.

Is the Phone Co-op doing enough to ensure that mosques, churches, gurdwaras, synagogues, mandirs and other faith premises are aware of the services available from The Phone Co-Op?

Movements such as Fair Trade and Jubilee 2000 (Third World Debt cancellation) have been hugely successful by having support from a wide range of faith communities.

How do candidates believe the Phone Co-Op best make their services known to such groups, and present them in an attractive way?

free range eggs wrote:I read with interest Charlotte Koelliker's personal profile amongst the election paperwork, in which her personal faith journey clearly plays a significant part in her life.

As a co-operative, our membership is open to those of all faiths, and those of none.

The faith communities throughout our country have a passion for the people within their communities and the ethical and environmental standards that the Phone Co-Op works to would be applauded by the majority of faith communities throughout our country.

Is the Phone Co-op doing enough to ensure that mosques, churches, gurdwaras, synagogues, mandirs and other faith premises are aware of the services available from The Phone Co-Op?

Movements such as Fair Trade and Jubilee 2000 (Third World Debt cancellation) have been hugely successful by having support from a wide range of faith communities.

How do candidates believe the Phone Co-Op best make their services known to such groups, and present them in an attractive way?

The Phone Co-op already supply services to a range of different faith organisations and this lends weight to your point that such groups share many of our values.

I believe that the most effective way to communicate our services to such groups is through our Affinity partner scheme.

As for your question whether we are doing enough in this field, The honest answer is "no". This has been mainly down to the fact that we are a small business with limited resources and therefore our management team has had to prioritise the targeting of our campaigns. The good news is that we are currently recruiting to strengthen our sales and marketing team, and for the first time we will have a marketing manager. I'm confident that this significant increase in resources will enable us to get our message across to a much wider audience, including faith groups.

I am inclined to agree that sometimes active promotion is not the thing, and that it is better to attract new business by performance and reputation. Jim Robertson

free range eggs wrote:I read with interest Charlotte Koelliker's personal profile amongst the election paperwork, in which her personal faith journey clearly plays a significant part in her life.

As a co-operative, our membership is open to those of all faiths, and those of none.

The faith communities throughout our country have a passion for the people within their communities and the ethical and environmental standards that the Phone Co-Op works to would be applauded by the majority of faith communities throughout our country.

Is the Phone Co-op doing enough to ensure that mosques, churches, gurdwaras, synagogues, mandirs and other faith premises are aware of the services available from The Phone Co-Op?

Movements such as Fair Trade and Jubilee 2000 (Third World Debt cancellation) have been hugely successful by having support from a wide range of faith communities.

How do candidates believe the Phone Co-Op best make their services known to such groups, and present them in an attractive way?

Many groups whether faith based or not, would applaud "the ethical and environmental standards that the Phone Co-Op works to". The best and cheapest way to reach a potential market is through word of mouth and by ensuring that the service or product offered is of the right quality at an acceptable price. Beyond that the phone co-op needs to first ascertain which market segment has most as yet unexploited potential. This would start with an analysis of the current customer base and compare this the overall telecoms market. Where is the phone co-op strong and where is it weak? Is there oppurtunity for growth in the areas of strength, or is there more oppurtunity to target areas of weakness? The co-op must then decide which group or groups it wishes to target, taking into account finaces and ethics. The cost and best way of targeting these needs to be ascertained. The information can be collected through existing customers, research already carried out by other organisations or by new surveys carried out by the phone co-op itself. Possibly existing customers already involved in e.g. fair trade can pass on information on the most effective means of getting your message across to the selected groups. What aspect of the Phone Co-op is most attractive to the different groups? How important is price, as against ethics? Would the affinity scheme be attractive to organistions at the centre of the group?
So far all I have done is posed many questions, but until such information is gathered a proper decision cannot be made. Many co-operatives have failed because they assumed that customers would support them based on their ethical and environmental standards.
For example organisations have supported fair trade and initially bought from the pioneers (mainly wholefood co-ops) but many of their members and constituents have switched to supermarkets who have jumped on the bandwagon and often sell fair trade products cheaper. Maybe the fair trade element in businesses in the developed world needs to be promoted as well.
The phone co-op has stated that it will give a high priority to developing its sales and marketing strategies over the next few years. I could come up with many suggestions e.g. faith publications, approaching national and local bodies etc. but the answer could vary from one group to another and it may be that the board and executive decide that initially other market sectors should be given priority. The important thing is that all options should be looked at and the policies and stategies adopted based on adequate information and thorough analysis.

Paul Grassick

One of the most positive ways of ensuring that faith communities engage with the Phone Coop is to ensure that we attract as diverse a range of mebers as possible. In common with many other co-operative organisations in the UK we seem to attract one section of the population. co-operatives UK is at present undertaking some research to try to find out how we can have a more diverse membership. I think that the Phone Coop needs to engage with this and work to diversify its membership.