N A D I R A Perera
LYNNE PARNELL & LORRAINE CHOWDHURY
LA BEAUTÉ DU MONDE
Describe how you got started in your business? I lived in Paris for twenty years. There, I studied, qualified and worked as a beauty therapist. The French system is very disciplined and achieves high standards. I migrated to Australia in 2010, Paris to Bellingen. I worked casually for two beauty businesses in town. A lovely lady advised me to register my French Diploma in Australia. With my husband and daughters’ help, I started a home based business, then I moved to the Old Council Chambers, O 1A Oak St, Bellingen, in 2013. How has your business evolved since it began? I am very happy where I am now! In 2017 I expanded the salon, adding more services and launched LUZERN Pure Cosmeceuticals skincare range, Organic ECOTAN spray tan, YOUNGBLOOD mineral makeup, BIOSCULPTURE and EVO2 oxygenating gel nails system. What is your greatest achievement? In business, it's having a functioning business that has a happy clientele, that grows by word of mouth. Receiving great feedback from locals and visitors is a great achievement in my life. What business leader do you look up to? Dr. Nadia PAYOT, beauty pioneer and philosopher, is my inspiration. She has developed effective products and designed unique salon facials for pure pleasure since 1920.
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i Lynne. Tell us about your relationship with the Coffs Coast ... I moved to the Coffs Coast with my husband and four children almost 17 years ago after visiting friends here on a holiday. We fell in love with the relaxed lifestyle, friendly people and lack of peak hour traffic! Since moving here I’ve had the privilege of working for some wonderful community and not for profit organisations, including ETC and Camp Quality, where I worked for more than eight years. We have two of our five children still living here and three of our five beautiful grandchildren born in Coffs Harbour. Lorraine would be classified as a local, having lived here for more than 30 years, and she has been involved in many community events, including Lifeline, Chilli Festival, Sawtell Chamber of Commerce, Tourist Information volunteer, to name a few. Lorraine has all but one of her children living and working on the Coffs Coast and is lucky to have all her grandchildren here involved in sport, music, dancing and community events. What is the Rate Us app, and how is it used? Rate Us is a mobile app that enables customers to rate the quality of services they receive from a range of industries, including aged care, disability services, hospitality, venue and accommodation, tourist attractions, fitness centres, staff surveys and any industry where the company values customer feedback and wants to improve the services they provide. Companies can also survey customers directly to the app and gauge their feedback on questions that relate to services they receive. How did you come up with the
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idea of the Rate Us app, and what motivated you to make it a reality? Initially it was my idea and I approached Lorraine, because we share a passion for empowering people to have a voice. We had worked in community services for many years, and customers often vented their frustrations to us about poor services they experienced and their inability to find the right person to listen to their feedback and improve those services. We wanted to find a way to use technology to give customers a voice directly to businesses on the quality of services they receive and give organisations access to immediate feedback, so that they could rectify poor service and strive towards service excellence. What was the process from idea to finished product? Our initial focus was on aged care and disability services, because this was the sector we were working in. We investigated the range of services provided in this sector and devised icons that represented those services, and then reviewed the national customer service standards, so that ratings aligned with these standards. These ratings are excellent, satisfactory and poor. We then decided to also include a survey function within the app to support the service ratings, so that companies can further survey customers with specific survey questions; again, we wanted it to be easy to use and applied a simple “Yes” or “No” function to encourage customers to complete surveys. We found a local app developer, Ben Burton from We Build Apps, and with our concept drawings and many meetings created Rate Us Applications. Since our initial launch we have expanded to cover a range of industries and services, including hospitality, tourism, retail, education, staff surveys (any industry); we can use Rate
Us for any business or industry that wants to better engage with their customers, improve training for staff and deliver customer service excellence. What has the response been like with users? Users love the app, because they can provide feedback at point of service and businesses can respond to that feedback with immediacy. Businesses can also engage with existing customers, and it shows the customer how valued they are! Staff surveys have been particularly popular, because staff can complete a survey and rating with anonymity and be honest - the business doesn’t always get the highest ratings, but it’s important that employees can give honest feedback without recrimination. The Rate Us app has grown a lot since it has started. How many industries have taken on the application? So far, Rate Us is being used by disability services, education services, retail, hospitality and most recently we have been engaged by Southern Cross University in Lismore and the Gold Coast. How do businesses/services go about implementing the use of the Rate Us app? Simply email us at Lorraine@rateusapp. com.au or roland@rateusapp.com.au or visit our website and click on the enquiry link and we will design rating icons and survey questions specific to your business and customer needs. Is the app just being used locally? Locally and interstate at the moment, but we currently have a Business Development Manager in the UK who is working with a range of industries there who are customer service focused. It’s exciting to see that we can turn our passion for people and our dream of giving the customer a voice into reality. Thanks Lynne.