Putting your feedback into action - part 1

Thanks to everyone who completed the Chamber 2019 membership survey and shared your thoughts about how we are doing, and what else we could do for businesses in the city.

We’ve reviewed the results and here’s an update on what action we’re taking. Stay tuned for the second update in January. 

You value your Chamber membership - over three quarters of survey respondents said they would highly recommend the Chamber to a friend or colleague.

71% of member respondents said that networking and asking the Chamber team for an introduction were highly valuable services offered by the Chamber.

The survey tells us that the Chamber is helping businesses in several ways, primarily to find collaborators, develop warm leads, develop partnerships and business referrals.

Our friendly, welcoming and well organised events were the top of the list of what people liked about our events.

The main reason people join the Chamber is to raise their profile and to be part of, and contribute to, the business community. 

Asking the Chamber team for an introduction was rated highly as a valuable service, and we’d love to facilitate more connections amongst the members.

A few survey respondents suggested that we help facilitate more targeted connections at events, and in between.

There are already several ways we work to connect our members, but we would love to do more of this:

• The more we know about your business and who you want to meet, the more we can facilitate connections with the right people. Book in a call with Amy, Head of Member Engagement (aka a business matchmaker) or attend a meet-up to tell us about your business.
• We introduced Slo-mo networking, a structured networking series, in March to help members network quickly and productively. They are every two months, or six a year, and it’s designed so that you can meet lots of people in one go.
• An attendee list for each event is sent out in the event confirmation email a week before the event. It also lists businesses by sector, helping you navigate and pinpoint who you want to meet. Review the list, research companies you’d like to meet and then send Amy an email and we will do our best to set those up on the day.  

In July we introduced the Member Hour, a new service for members to help businesses connect and get advice from each other. The survey told us that we need to do more to promote the service. We think the Member Hour is a great opportunity to get free, personalised advice and support for your business. Stories about how they’ve helped businesses are already coming in. You’ll be hearing from us in the next few months about the latest Member Hours available and how they could help you and your business.   

The second update in January will feature more information about what you told us about our events programme and opportunities for 2020.

A big thank you to Bonamy Waddell from Bon Insight for reviewing the anonymous survey data and producing an insights report. It has helped us put the right things into action.

If you’d like to tell us anything else about your membership, or find out how you can get involved with Brighton Chamber, you can contact Amy on amy@brightonchamber.co.uk or 01273 719097.

If you want to contribute to the Chamber blog, contact us on hannah@brightonchamber.co.uk