Thank you to everyone who submitted feedback to us. Your input is extremely important and valued, and we appreciate the time you have allocated to complete this for the Tamworth Business Chamber.

Below are the results from the feedback submissions and our proposed action plan moving forward.

Networking Events – 62.07%

We are currently working on our annual event calendar and have some exciting networking opportunities coming up. These will be uploaded to the website in the coming weeks, and as the events get closer, we will add to social media and open sales for the ticketed events. Our aim moving forward is to have an array of events from Member Only Events, networking specific and events with educational and informative segments and other business support services to help your business to thrive.

We will continue to highlight your business and advocate for you in a variety of ways, from member directory and website links on the Chamber website, taking your voice to all levels of government, inviting members to join events, become sponsors and create opportunities for you to engage more within the community. And of course, as always members will continue to have access to discounted member only prices.

Networking Events – 59.26%

The business chamber will continue to provide the current services and will always be looking to add new services to provide to our members and the business community. We are developing a new mentoring program, so watch this space, and we are developing new and creative ways to open the communication channels, for you as a member to share your thoughts, ideas, concerns, and challenges with other members, and us as your Tamworth Business Chamber support team. We are creating a new membership package that aligns more with members needs, to ensure more benefits and value is coming from your membership. These new member packages will be available to review in the coming months.

Our focuses moving forward will be more aligned to our members and their needs, and will include increased advocacy, increased support services, more networking and learning opportunities just to name a few. As a chamber we acknowledge that there were some past challenges. We are committed to earning your trust thorough our dedication and consistent effort. We are focused on supporting you and bringing you value to improve, grow, and develop your business to ensure it thrives within our community.

Low to No Satisfaction – 58.62%

This is an area we are committed to work on and improve.

From everyone who completed the survey, it is evident that valuable and beneficial networking opportunities are a need for your local businesses, and we agree. With a new Events Manager on board at the Chamber, Fionas focus is to deliver events with meaningful purpose, that is both beneficial and valuable to local business and the teams of people that keep these businesses alive. The Junior Chamber will have a large input into these events (with more information on how we will be doing this coming up soon) and with the support from the Operations Manager and the Board of Directors, we will offer more opportunities and more diversity in this area. We value the voice, support and connections from our members and will always encourage your ideas, thoughts, and involvement in our events.

When creating and organising events, we endeavour to provide a variety of the type of events we hold. We look at location with a thought process of sharing the love and holding the events at different venues and times. We look at what’s happening within the community and businesses to create opportunities to learn about new issues, or business concepts, to voice concerns and ideas, to advance your knowledge and skills to take back to your business and your teams to enhance your growth and potential within the business community. We also understand the need to hold events where there is no agenda, no theme, with the concept of networking and coming together to just talk and listen. This is where great ideas, advice and opportunities can be born, and support can be given and that’s the idea right………

Effective – 41.38%

Obviously, this is an especially important area for us to really dig into, to represent and support you and your business better. With some ideas on how we can do this, I believe it is important to learn more from members around this space, about the specifics that are related to you I would like to open this to a discussion with anyone interested in sharing their thoughts in more detail.

The focus moving forward is to enhance support and services to our members that is valuable, beneficial, and specific to our businesses and community. As new changes within the Chamber are developing, we will pick up a shortfall that has occurred from these changes, and create, develop, and promote more opportunities for you as a member, not only in networking and events, but in advocacy, marketing, communications, and in building more knowledge and information around services available inside and outside of the chamber. We are here for you; we want to be guided by your and your business needs. We welcome communication, ideas, thoughts, opinions, and your support to support the business community to grow and thrive. With 7 Board of Directors, 8 Junior Chamber Committee Members and 2 Operational Staff, representing and supporting you, we can work together to become stronger.

We understand that advocacy holds significant value for you, and we want to assure you that we're actively working towards it, even if the outcomes may not be immediately apparent. We encourage you to continue voicing your needs, ideas and opinions to us and we will continue to advocate at the required levels as much as we can.

Where this result isn’t too bad, we have room for improvement. We aim to become more available, known, and present for you moving forward. Our operations team is small, with just 2 people and we are trying to reach as many people as we can personally, however, we have an ongoing open invitation for you to reach out to us via multiple methods, including phone, email, face to face and with a new CRM system that will allow you to have access to your profile for more visibility around your membership and what we as a chamber are doing to support you. We have a small office in the centre of town, located in the Town Hall, and we love coffee, so please feel free to call in and say hello and we can chat over a warm cup.

We are currently looking at new and innovative ways to improve and increase our services to you as members and will be rolling these improvements on an ongoing basis, as we believe there is always room to learn and grow and improve.  

But most importantly – Let us be your voice!

Let’s learn from each other. Let’s support one another. With all the old, new, big, and small and variety of different businesses in town we can offer a mountainous amount of knowledge and support to our fellow colleagues, businesspeople, services, and community. Let’s tap into this and let us be your voice. As a chamber, we distribute a monthly newsletter, we use social media, and website marketing, if there is anything you believe can benefit, help, support, add value or even just make someone smile, send it to us and we will add it to the newsletter. We encourage cohesiveness, collaboration, and support to build a stronger, more vibrant, thriving community. Remembering – working together, we are stronger.

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