TLM-Retail Sales Associate Student English

 If a customer keeps checking the price tag for every product they look at, it‘s clear that they have a budget in mind and are confused as to where to look. You can help them by directing them to the right section. Signs of an Upset Customer  Upset customers are common in many companies. This is primarily due to bad customer service.  The first sign of an upset customer is the use of a loud voice.  Agitated hand gestures increase proportionately with the customer's level of being upset.  An upset customer may turn aggressive. In this case he will be disrespectful and will demand to speak to a higher authority.  An upset customer will usually surround himself with familiar people like family or friends for support, so you can recognize him or her by spotting such a group. Signs of a Dis-Satisfied Customer  A dis-satisfied customer is usually not as aggressive as an upset customer.  The customer will usually engage in a long conversation with staff members, explaining their problems at length. Patience is a virtue that the service representative must possess in such situations. These are basic visual clues that can be used to identify confused, upset, or dis-satisfied customers. Customer service representatives must keep in mind the above signs so that they may be prepared to handle such customers at any time. 164

Chapter 11 To resolve customer concerns  The Importance of listening customer service Everyone who has ever worked in a customer service capacity knows that we won‘t always have the ability or resources to solve every customer problem we encounter. What we can do each and every time we speak with a customer is offer them our attention, by listening to their needs in an engaged manner and responding appropriately. Listening forms the foundation of any effective customer service interaction2, and it is one of the most powerful tools available for turning a negative experience into a positive one. Research has shown that both participants in a conversation feel better when they perceive the other party is engaged in active listening, meaning that it has the potential to increase satisfaction for both customers and employees. Here are a few ways that listening is important to customer service: Empathy Begins with Active Listening The absence of empathy is a prominent cause of service failure plaguing many organizations. When customers don‘t believe that a representative is truly engaged in trying to understand their problem, they‘re much more likely to walk away. When customer service professionals assume they know what a customer is feeling instead of listening for the language and cues that can truly signal the customer‘s underlying emotions, empathy is impossible to achieve. Active listening techniques, such as eye contact and body language, can signal to the customer that we are engaged in the conversation and help us empathize with the customer by mirroring their presence and relating to their state. Listen as Customers Tell Us How to Resolve Their Issue When service breakdowns do occur, every company dreams of using the experience as an opportunity for service recovery (which can leave the customer with more positive feelings than if no issue had occurred). Many times, when a customer is explaining what went wrong and what they expect, service employees can read between the lines of the conversation and determine exactly what it will take to ―wow‖ them and win them back. We just need to remember that the first step in customer service listening is to stop speaking. Listening Keeps the Focus on the Customer Experience 165

Customer service conversations shouldn‘t be about us, our skills, our organizations, or our products; they should always be about the customer‘s experience. Committing our full attention throughout the conversation keeps the focus squarely on the customer and ensures that the interaction proceeds with their needs as the primary driver. Reduce Instances of Miscommunication Miscommunication breeds frustration and what may seem like a harmless error to us could be the last straw for1 a customer who feels like nothing is going their way. Proactively listening to our customer before taking action allows us to gather all of the information we need to help prevent miscommunication and the resulting service issues that come from not understanding what the customer is trying to tell us. Listening Is an Improvement Mechanism1 One of the most powerful ways to improve the performance of our teams is to train our team members to not only listen carefully but to document what they‘ve learned from their conversations with customers. Our customers are our best source for details about our successes and failures and often it is the unscripted, unstructured feedback data that provides the best insights into the experience we are providing. Often some of our best data comes from conversations on the front lines1 that are recorded in our CRM and that data is only as strong as the listening skills of the rep having the conversation.  Revealing Questions to Ask to Really Understand Your Client True understanding is the result of asking good questions -- ones that go beyond the surface and make people reconsider an issue, view a problem through a new perspective, or even spark a completely new idea. But many of us are not skilled in the art of questioning, nor do we feel comfortable grilling our clients for answers to difficult and complicated questions. However, it's an important exercise, especially at the beginning of a relationship or during the sales phase. The right questions and resulting answers not only help you to provide better results for your clients, but the act of asking questions that prompt productive dialogues can improve your relationships. With a better understanding of the client's business, her goals and challenges, needs, and values, you can find new ways to provide value to the client and connect with the larger team. The below is an extensive list of questions you could or should ask your clients during the course of your relationship. Not all are going to be relevant to your situation, and there are 166

many that you should customize to the specific client. Consider which ones would be valuable for starting a conversation with your prospective or current clients, and how you can use the answers to create better creative work that actually makes a impact on the client's organization. And don' forget: Asking a good question means nothing if you aren't prepared to listen. 90 Questions to Ask to Improve Your Client Relationships Questions on Previous Marketing Performance & Goals 1) What are your monthly marketing goals? 2) What are your quarterly marketing goals? 3) What are your yearly marketing goals? 4) What are the consequences if you don‘t achieve these quarterly or yearly marketing goals? 5) What are your monthly sales goals? 6) What are your quarterly sales goals? 7) What are your yearly sales goals? 8) What happens if you don‘t achieve these quarterly or yearly sales goals? 9) Do you have a service level agreement (SLA) between marketing and sales in place? 10) Who created this agreement? 11) What happens if marketing does not meet its commitments to sales? 12) How much do you spend on marketing annually? 13) What results would you have to see to be able to secure more budget for marketing on an annual basis? 14) What is your customer acquisition cost (CAC)? 15) What is the ratio of customer lifetime value to CAC (LTV:CAC)? 16) What is your time to payback CAC number? 17) What percentage of customer deals is generated by marketing currently? 18) What percentage of customer deals is influenced by marketing? 19) What is your current customer conversion rate? 20) What is the lifetime value of a customer? 21) What marketing metrics do you currently track? 22) Which ones are most useful and valuable to your team? 23) What tactics provided the highest ROI for your business last year? 24) What tactics were least successful? 25) What marketing activities are done to build your brand versus provide a return on investment? 167

26) What about your current measurements are flawed? 27) What does a successful marketing campaign look like? 28) Have you launched any campaigns that you would consider risky and what were the results? 29) What are your criteria for measuring lead quality? 30) What offers or marketing campaigns create low quality leads? 31) What offers or marketing campaigns create high quality leads? 32) What tools do you use to manage your marketing? 33) What tools do you use to track and analyze your campaigns? 34) If you sell goods offline, how do you track those sales back to digital sources? Questions Detailing the Client's Business 35) What values and beliefs define your brand? 36) What are the pain points you solve for customers? 37) How do prospects find your product? 38) What sources bring in the highest value customers? 39) How strategies are in place to retain customers? 40) What is your up sell strategy? 41) From an overall business standpoint, what is your biggest challenge? 42) What are your biggest marketing challenges? 43) What are your biggest sales challenges? 44) For these challenges, why have they not been solved? 45) What has been the negative effect of these challenges/problems on your business? 46) What does your sales process look like? 47) How long is the average sales cycle? 48) What three pieces of content are most useful during the sales process? 49) What are the biggest challenges your customer service reps face? 50) What makes your business unique in the market? 51) Who are your three biggest competitors? 52) Who isn‘t a competitor now but could be in the future? 53) What marketing done by a competitor made you jealous? 54) What do you want your company to be known for in the market? 55) What makes you personally excited to come to work every day? 56) What technological advance or product could disrupt your business model in 5 or 10 years? 168

Questions on the Brand's Audience & Industry 57) Who is your target audience? Do you have established buyer personas for each of your target customer groups? 58) What is the size of your total addressable market? 59) What percentage of your market is aware of your brand and products/services? 60) What are the top publications/blogs in your industry? 61) What conferences in your industry are must-attend events? 62) What makes buying your product or service necessary? What makes a customer buy right now? 63) Are there seasonal buying patterns that affect your sales? 64) What types of prospects are not a good fit for your company? 65) What misperceptions do prospects have about your brand? 66) What do leads say they like or dislike about the brand and its marketing? 67) What are the top reasons a lead doesn‘t close? Questions on the Agency-Client Relationship 68) Why did you change agencies? 69) What made you want to hire our agency? 70) What worked/didn‘t work with your previous marketing partner? 71) What would make you want to fire our agency? 72) What factors do you think make the client-agency relationship successful? 73) How does your company‘s leader view the role of marketing in the brand‘s overall success? 74) Who are the decision makers in your department? 75) What tools do you use to project management your campaigns? 76) What have we done recently that surprised you? 77) What have we done that been of most value to you? 78) How could my team improve its communication with your team? 79) Who on your team do we need to build a better relationship with? 80) What type of communication (phone, email, text, etc.) works best for you? 81) What is your typically response time for returning calls and responding to emails? 82) How could we better communicate deadlines, timelines, and project updates? 83) How do you handle password management of your company profiles? 84) Do you have a crisis communication plan in place? 169

85) What is the procedure for dealing with a customer complaint or problem online? 86) which of our team members would you hire and why? 87) What is keeping you up at night? 88) What skills are lacking in your current staff members? 89) What would you like more training on? 90) What services do you wish our agency offered?  Effective customer services problem solving In many cases, problem-solving is so difficult because you need to maneuver between company policies and the interest of a customer. That‘s what happened here. But it turned out that while the first rep was not able to deal with such a situation, the second had the right problem-solving skills to address the problem. FOUR TROUBLESHOOTING STEPS Here‘s something that should be helpful for any customer service representative: a path that you should follow to provide satisfying solutions to customers. 1. Understanding the customer‟s point of view So, here‘s the customer. They contact you and ask for something impossible to do. Let‘s say that they were informed that your company will be cutting their phone line for non- payment. Now this customer is asking you to credit the last couple of invoices because they don‘t have money (this is a real request I‘ve got when I was working in call center). A regular person‘s first thought would be: ―are they nuts?‖ But you are not a regular person. You‘re a Support Hero and it‟s your job to save the customer‟s day. Negative thinking won‘t get you any closer to the solution. Maybe a customer is a fraud, but maybe they are in a very bad situation and desperately need help. You can‘t tell what‘s right and what‘s wrong at this stage, so you should assume that the customer is not a fraud and you should assist them. It‘s not your job to judge their motives. You need to listen actively to understand the problem and find a way you can help. 2. Identifying a problem Sometimes customers are not able to clearly explain what is wrong and it‘s completely normal. They don‘t know your processes or your jargon; they just know that they‟ve had expectations towards your product or services and are disappointed now. It‘s your job to restore their faith in your company, but first, you need to find out where the problem is. 170

Here are few questions that can help you troubleshoot. Sometimes thanks to these simple questions you‘re able to see that there is an outage or that a faulty batch of products was sent out by a manufacturer!  Can you describe exactly the problem you‘re having?  When did the problem begin?  Has the problem occurred before? And now ask yourself:  Are all users affected or only one?  Has anyone had this problem before? Once a customer replies to all your questions, summarize answers back to them. It will let them know that you understand them and will help you to verify the facts. If you haven‘t heard about such a problem, or you‘re not sure what to do, apologize briefly and inform that you need to discuss this case with your colleague or supervisor. Try to sound self- confident and don‘t be afraid to ask a customer to hold on a minute. Customers appreciate getting the correct answer, even if it will take a bit longer. But instead of saying an awful ―sorry but I‘ll have to transfer you to the other department‖, try to say:We‘re going to resolve this case for you. I will transfer you to a specialist who‘s the best person to answer your question. 3. Find a solution Make a good use of your analytical thinking and try to find out a solution that will suit your customer the best. Here are a few questions that should help you to plan a solution:  is there an adequate staff to carry it out?  who will be involved in solution,  how much time will a solution take (time frame),  what is needed to make it happen,  who should be informed about the planned solution,  how will a customer be notified about the solution? Even if you‘re dealing with a case that‘s not going along with your company‘s policy, there is always something you can suggest. Let‘s take the example with a customer asking for a refund. Even if your company‘s policy won‘t let you credit these charges, there is still something you can do.  you can inform the customer that you cannot credit the bill, but you can split the payment into a couple of smaller payments so that the customer could afford it, 171

 you can postpone the suspension of the account so the client can use the phone,  you can check the customer‘s account and suggest changing price plan to a cheaper one. One unreasonable request and three possible solutions that depend on your creativity! But what will happen if you are not the one who can solve the problem? First of all, you might need to open a ticket. You need to make sure that this ticket doesn‘t get lost in your CRM‘s oblivion, so you need to assign it to yourself and monitor if it‘s resolved in time. If the problem is not solved in 24 hours, you might want to contact the customer and inform them that you‘re still working on a problem. Sometimes the problem cannot be solved at all. Your company stopped selling the particular product, you don‘t have a gluten-free option in your restaurant‘s menu, a customer wants to use a feature that doesn‘t exist… It doesn‘t mean that you can‘t still find a possible solution! If you‘re not selling these gear bags, let the customer know who does it. If you don‘t have anything gluten-free in your menu, ask the customer if they want something from the nearest shop. Making an extra mile can translate into customer happiness even if you don‟t solve the problem the way customer expected you to do. Here‘s an example from our experience. My colleague, Justyna, has received a chat from a customer upset with the fact that our application doesn‘t have an in-built screen-sharing and screenshot-making tool. After taking a few deep breaths, I told Aline that even though the tools that she needed doesn‘t come with Live Chat itself, she can set up an integration allowing her to have screen-sharing sessions with her clients and use a free screenshot tool like Jing. That did the trick! She was very happy with the solution, so my mission was accomplished. 4. Fix the problem and follow up on the solution At last! The customer has agreed on a solution. You‘ve briefly apologized for the problem and now you can fix it and close the case, right? Unfortunately, it‘s not that simple. Sometimes your solution will not resolve the cause of the problem. Let‘s say that customer had an issue with the application and you‘ve suggested restarting the device. It is possible that it will resolve the problem, but it‘s more likely that this customer will come back to 172

you. And it‘s more probable that they‘ll be upset that the solution you gave them did not work. I know, when working in customer service, you hardly have time to go for a break and I‘m asking you to follow up your customer‘s problems, right? But here are positives of spending a bit of your time on contacting these customers back.  you show that you really care about them and create an awesome experience,  you make sure you won‘t get a call or chat from a furious customer,  you check if your solution worked and will be sure of it next time. And if you don‘t have time to make any calls or send any emails, your team can make use of an automatic survey that will tell you how happy the customer was and if you‘ve helped to solve his problem. You can use Survey Monkey, Mail Chimp or you can simply send a template of a message asking two questions:  Did we help you to solve your problem?  Can you rate your overall experience (1-10)? Customers will appreciate it! PROBLEM SOLVING IS A MINDSET, NOT AN ABILITY If you‘ve read my post about problem solving skills, you remember the golden rule of customer service. Even when the problem does not concern your product, you can still create an amazing customer experience by suggesting a possible solution. Because this is what is customer service for. For solving problems, not for telling what customers want to hear. So as long as you don‘t give up, use the advice I‘ve shared with you and think positive – there will be no problem you can‘t solve.  share customer feedback with others Everybody likes a team high five, but there are many other ways that you can share customer compliments, good feedback and news. Customer compliments often reflects great service from a whole team. Good feedback is useless unless shared with a team. Even good feedback for individual agents can give others an insight into the level of service they should be aiming to give. Here are a few suggestions on how to share feedback with the rest of the team. 1. The notice board A simple, low-tech but timeless way to communicate, a notice board can be one of the most effective ways to share good customer feedback. If a team or member of staff is commended, 173

a team leader could fill out a customer compliment card which can then be pinned to the board. Sainsbury‘s do this with a large notice board in the staff canteen or break room. It could easily be done in any communal area in a call centre, or in each team‘s work area. One possible drawback to this is if one member of staff receives far more good feedback than any other. A board displaying compliments all for the same person can cause resentment and looks a little bit like hero worship. Compliments & Recognition Board If someone is outperforming others consistently, display a few of the best feedback comments and reward that member of staff in a different way. They probably deserve it. 2. A big screen Large call centers with plasma-screen TVs on the customer service floor may find them useful as a high-tech alternative to the feedback notice board. At certain times during the day the latest positive feedback could be displayed. This has the advantage of being visible to far more agents than a notice board in only one place. It also takes far less time to update, providing the call centre has software to control what is displayed on the screens easily. Good feedback could also be combined with tips and hints as a constant but unobtrusive reminder to deliver a high level of service at all times. 174

3. Monday morning meetings A brief meeting at the beginning of the week is a great way to motivate the team and get everyone back into work mode after the weekend. Sharing good customer feedback from the previous week could lift a team and end the meeting on a high. Again, try to make sure praise is not just confined to one-star performer and no one else. 4. Letter from the boss Good service at any level should be recognized throughout a company. A letter from the CEO to a team or employee that performs particularly well can remind people that their contribution is valued by the whole organization. 5. The company intranet Sharing feedback on the company intranet can increase the visibility of customer feedback. ―There are tools deployed in our call centers that provide ongoing access to customer satisfaction surveys and specific customer feedback in real time,‖ said Mark Smith, Operations Director, EMEA, and Convergys Customer Management. ―This can have a significant impact in driving agent confidence and personal empowerment.‖ Creating a league table on the company intranet would be a fun way to share feedback. A weekly top 10 could be produced of the best compliments received, and these could be added to an annual league table that added up the total instances of good feedback received by each team or agent. Social media could be used to host this. Face book allows the creation of private groups that can only be seen by those invited to join. A team leader or member of the HR department could administer the group and update the result each week. The kind of friendly banter exchanged on social media could help employees spur each other on. 175

Chapter 12 To organise the delivery of reliable service  The Importance of accurate, reliable and timely data Accurate, reliable and timely information is vital to effective decision-making in almost every aspect of human endeavour, whether it be undertaken by individuals, community organizations, businesses or governments. It is an essential component of any effort to persuade individuals, businesses or governments to make different decisions from the ones which they might make in the absence of particular pieces of information. And it is an integral part of any attempt to hold those who make decisions accountable for the consequences of the decisions which they make. In the absence of accurate, reliable and timely information, people and organizations will make bad decisions; they will be unable to help or persuade others to make better decisions; and no-one will be able to ascertain whether the decisions made by particular individuals or organizations were the best ones that could have been made at the time. In short, information is a source of influence and power. That is why authoritarian governments seek to control access to information. Open, enlightened societies do not have ‗Ministries of Information‘; rather, they put in place procedures (such as ‗freedom of information‘ legislation) which attempt to prevent governments from restricting access to information. Not all information can be summarized in numerical forms (what are commonly called data). And data (such as weights, volumes, counts, and monetary values) cannot capture every aspect of individual, business or government activity. But it is a truism that ‗what gets measured gets valued‘; and that what is not, or cannot be, measured tends to be ignored. The scope of what can be measured and enumerated in the form of data is widening almost continuously, not least as a result of advances in information technology. Two of the more obvious examples of this are in sport and health care. The variety and volume of data on athlete or player performance available to coaches, spectators, officials and players or athletes themselves has mushroomed in recent years, changing the way in which athletes and players are evaluated and trained. Likewise, the ability to measure and calibrate in much finer detail patients‘ breathing, blood flow and other physiological and psychological responses has dramatically changed the way in which illnesses are treated. 176

In the business sector it is becoming increasingly common – some might say essential – to extract and analyse minutely detailed information about customer behaviour, and about the profitability of individual products or services, points of sale and business units or even individual employees – in pursuit of goals such as market share, productivity or profit. Rising expectations – including the growing expectation that those entrusted with scarce resources (such as public funds) have to demonstrate that they have used them wisely, for the purposes for which they were provided (that is, to be accountable for their use – have also contributed to an increasing demand for data. From a development or poverty alleviation perspective, as the World Bank puts it, ―Statistics are crucial in the fight against poverty. They are the essential starting point, telling us how many people live below the poverty line in developing countries, how social, economic and environmental conditions differ throughout regions, what infrastructure, health and education services are lacking across the world. Statistics also tell us how successful policies designed to alleviate poverty are: whether maternal mortality has decreased through investment in health care; whether more children are attending school through increases in teacher training; whether fewer people are starving through the implementation of focussed agricultural projects for example. They reveal if our goals are achievable and if our strategies are on track. They alert us when we need to modify development programs and re-direct resources‖ Accurate, reliable and timely statistics are similarly essential to programs aimed at alleviating poverty, deprivation and marginalisation of Indigenous communities, in Australia and elsewhere. The explicit exclusion of Indigenous inhabitants from statistical collections such as the Census prior to 1968 was, arguably, part of a broader pattern of exclusion of Indigenous communities from full participation in Australian life. And although the Australian Bureau of Statistics, in particular, has for many years sought assiduously to collect and publish statistical information relating to Australia‘s Indigenous inhabitants, explicitly seeking to involve Indigenous people and communities in the gathering and use of statistics2 , there are numerous gaps in essential information – particularly at the regional or local level – and the accuracy and validity of the data is widely questioned, undermining its relevance to decision-making and program evaluation. As John Taylor of the Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research at the Australian National University points out, ―there appears to be a growing mismatch between the broad direction that Indigenous affairs policy is taking – focussing effort on partnerships with specific regions, communities and 177

even families – and the availability of information (except from the five-yearly census) at these detailed levels … Today, what is framed by government as a new partnership approach exists in Indigenous affairs in Australia, but invariably the statistical basis for assessing its effectiveness is lacking‖ The inadequacy of existing statistics regarding Indigenous populations extends to the most basic question of how May Indigenous people there are in particular locations. In Tasmania, for example, census statistics (which suggest that a higher proportion of that State‘s population is of Indigenous origin than of any other jurisdiction except the Northern Territory) are widely believed (including by prominent representatives of the Indigenous community) to over-state the number of persons of Aboriginal descent. Conversely, in the Shepparton district census statistics are widely believed to under-state the size of the local Indigenous community. In such circumstances it is almost impossible for discussions about the effectiveness of programs aimed at improving Indigenous education or health outcomes, or increasing Indigenous participation in the labour market, not to be undermined by doubts about the reliability of data. And yet the availability of accurate, timely and reliable data – data which is accepted without question as such by all stakeholders - could do so much to inform discussion about the effectiveness or otherwise of such programs, or about the design of alternative programs where existing ones have been shown to have been ineffective, and to build persuasive arguments for making strategic investments in new programs. As but a simple example, if there were a widely accepted estimate of the number of Indigenous people of working age (15-65) in the Shepparton area, of the number of those who were in paid employment, and of their average remuneration, it would be possible to calculate the benefit to the broader community (for example in terms of the net increase in purchasing power) of a program designed to increase the employment rate of Indigenous inhabitants towards that of the community as a whole. सांोखिकी हमंे यह भी बताती है वक गरीबी को कम करने के वलए वकतनी सिल नीवतयांो बनाई गई हंै: क्या स्वास्थ्य देखभाल में वनिेश के माध्यम से मातृ मृत्यु दर कम हो गई है; क्या वशक्षक अवधक प्रवशक्षण के माध्यम से स्कू ल मंे भाग ले रहे हैं; उदाहरण के वलए कंे वित कृ वष पररयोजनाओों के कायािन्वयन के माध्यम से कम लोग भूखे हंै या नही।ों िे बताते हैं वक क्या हमारे लक्ष्य प्राप्त वकए जा सकते हंै और यवद हमारी रणनीवतयांो टरैक पर हैं। िे हमें सतकि करते हैं जब हमंे विकास कायिक्रमोों को सोंशोवधत करने और सोंसाधनोों को विर से वनदेवशत करने की आिश्यकता होती है \" 178

सटीक, भरोसेमंोद और समय पर आंोकडे ऑस्टरेवलया और अन्य जगहोों पर गरीबी, िोंवचत और स्वदेशी समुदायोों के हावशए को कम करने के उद्देश्य से कायिक्रमोंो के वलए समान रूप से आिश्यक हैं। 1 9 68 से पहले जनगणना जैसे सांोखिकीय संोग्रह से स्वदेशी वनिावसयोों का स्पष्ट बवहष्कार, तकि सोंगत रूप से, ऑस्टरेवलयाई जीिन में पूणि भागीदारी से स्वदेशी समुदायोों के बवहष्कार के व्यापक पैटनि का वहस्सा था। और हालांोवक, विशेष रूप से ऑस्टरेवलयाई ब्यूरो ऑि स्टैवटखस्टक्स ने कई िषों तक ऑस्टरेवलया के स्वदेशी वनिावसयोों से संोबंोवधत साोंखिकीय जानकारी एकवित करने और प्रकावशत करने के वलए दृढ़ता से मांोग की है, स्पष्ट रूप से आोंकडे 2 के एकिण और उपयोग में स्वदेशी लोगोंो और समुदायोंो को शावमल करने की मांोग कर रहे हंै, इसमें कई अोंतर हंै आिश्यक जानकारी - विशेष रूप से क्षेिीय या स्थानीय स्तर पर - और डेटा की सटीकता और िैधता व्यापक रूप से पूछताछ की जाती है, वनणिय लेने और कायिक्रम मूल्ांोकन के वलए इसकी प्रासोंवगकता को कमजोर करती है। ऑस्टरेवलयाई राष्टर ीय विश्वविद्यालय में आवदिासी आवथिक नीवत अनुसंोधान कें ि के जॉन टेलर के रूप मंे, \"इन विस्तृत स्तरोों पर विवशष्ट क्षेिो,ों समुदायोों और यहाों तक वक पररिारोंो - और जानकारी की उपलब्धता (पाोंच साल की जनगणना को छोडकर) की साझेदारी पर स्वदेशी मामलोों की नीवत ले रही है - व्यापक वदशा के बीच एक बढ़ती विसोंगवत वदखाई देती है - ... आज, ऑस्टरेवलया में स्वदेशी मामलोों मंे एक नई भागीदारी दृवष्टकोण के रूप में सरकार द्वारा तैयार वकया गया है, लेवकन अवनिायि रूप से इसकी प्रभािशीलता का आकलन करने के वलए साोंखिकीय आधार की कमी है \" स्वदेशी आबादी के बारे में मौजूदा आंोकडोंो की अपयािप्तता सबसे बुवनयादी सिाल है वक कै से स्वदेशी लोग विशेष स्थानोों पर हो सकते हैं। तस्मावनया मंे, उदाहरण के वलए, जनगणना के आोंकडे (जो बताते हंै वक उत्तरी क्षेि को छोडकर वकसी भी अन्य क्षेिावधकार की तुलना मंे उस राज्य की आबादी का उच्च अनुपात स्वदेशी मूल है) व्यापक रूप से माना जाता है (स्वदेशी समुदाय के प्रमुख प्रवतवनवधयोों द्वारा) को राज्य मंे आवदिासी िंोश के व्यखियोंो की संोिा। इसके विपरीत, शेपाटिन वजला जनगणना के आंोकडोंो में व्यापक रूप से स्थानीय राज्य के आकार के रूप मंे माना जाता है स्वदेशी समुदाय ऐसी पररखस्थवतयोों में स्वदेशी वशक्षा या स्वास्थ्य पररणामोों में सुधार या श्रम बाजार में स्वदेशी भागीदारी मंे िृखि के उद्देश्य से कायिक्रम की प्रभािशीलता के बारे मंे चचािओंो के वलए लगभग असोंभि है, डेटा की विश्वसनीयता के बारे में संोदेह से कमजोर नहीों होना चावहए। और विर भी सटीक, समय पर और भरोसेमोंद डेटा की उपलब्धता - डेटा जो सभी वहतधारकोों द्वारा प्रश्न के वबना स्वीकार वकए जाते हैं - इस तरह के कायिक्रमोंो के प्रभािशीलता या अन्यथा, या िैकखिक कायिक्रमोंो के वडजाइन के बारे में चचाि को सूवचत करने के वलए बहुत कु छ कर सकते हैं, जहाों मौजूदा 179

लोग वदखाया गया है वक नए कायिक्रमोों मंे रणनीवतक वनिेश करने के वलए अप्रभािी और तकि सोंगत तकि तैयार वकए गए हंै। लेवकन एक साधारण उदाहरण के रूप मंे, यवद शेपटिन क्षेि मंे कामकाजी आयु (15-65) के स्वदेशी लोगोों की संोिा का व्यापक रूप से स्वीकायि अनुमान था, जो वक िेतन में थे, और उनके औसत पाररश्रवमक की संोिा के बारे मंे, पूरे समुदाय के प्रवत स्वदेशी वनिावसयोंो की रोजगार दर बढ़ाने के वलए वडजाइन वकए गए कायिक्रम के व्यापक समुदाय (उदाहरण के वलए क्रय शखि में शुि िृखि के संोदभि में) के लाभ की गणना करना संोभि होगा। Suppose that of the 2,500 Indigenous inhabitants estimated by the Shepparton Koori Research and Information Centre to be living in the district, 1,500 are of working age and that of them 300 or 20% are thought to be in paid employment earning an average of $30,000 per annum. Raising this number to 915 or 61%, roughly in line with the national average, at the same average income (which is well below the national average) would thus inject an additional $27½mn (gross) into the broader Shepparton community each year. Similarly, accurate information on Indigenous housing occupancy would enable calculations to be made of the net community benefit (for example by way of rent payments to local landlords) of narrowing the readily observable wide gap between the number of Indigenous residents per dwelling and that of the broader community. Such information would materially assist in making decisions about the ‗return‘ on any public (or private) funds devoted to improving employment or housing outcomes for Indigenous citizens, and subsequently in evaluating the effectiveness of such programs. However it is impossible to have a conversation among stakeholders on the basis of mutually understood and accepted data at present because it simply does not exist. That partly reflects the (to some extent understandable) wariness of Indigenous people in providing accurate information about themselves and their families to government agencies; and it partly reflects the lack of importance attached to collecting such data by government agencies themselves. To be useful in identifying the extent of problems or the effectiveness of programs designed to deal with them, data has to be collected and assembled in a transparent, rigorous fashion, in accordance with established sampling and other statistical procedures and free of any suggestion of pre-determined bias. There is no point in collecting data and publishing data if it is open to suggestions of being derived from samples which are too small or using processes which have been queried or 180