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For 2023 (and 2024 ...) - we are now fully retired from IT training.
We have made many, many friends over 25 years of teaching about Python, Tcl, Perl, PHP, Lua, Java, C and C++ - and MySQL, Linux and Solaris/SunOS too. Our training notes are now very much out of date, but due to upward compatability most of our examples remain operational and even relevant ad you are welcome to make us if them "as seen" and at your own risk.

Lisa and I (Graham) now live in what was our training centre in Melksham - happy to meet with former delegates here - but do check ahead before coming round. We are far from inactive - rather, enjoying the times that we are retired but still healthy enough in mind and body to be active!

I am also active in many other area and still look after a lot of web sites - you can find an index ((here))
The importance of feedback

Much of my job is answering questions that people ask. And another big part is answering questions that people haven't actually asked, but would ask if they knew they wanted / needed to ask - it's called training, or you could call it "proactive informing" rather than "reactive informing".

Feedback is the lifeblood of this informer's world. At the end of every course, we provide delegates with a course review sheet - on which we invite comments on various aspects of the training and - crucially - encourage additional comments and suggestions. We can't implement every idea that comes our way; some would simply cost too much (in terms of extra time taken or financially) to carry through, others would be impractical for us or lead to significant negative impacts for other customers, and others would lead us into trying to teach subjects that we simply don't know. But feedback is imprortant - critically important - to us moving our hotel and training product forward. And indeed it's not just reviews sheets that we use - sometimes you'll see me stop and make a note of a good idea during a course, scrawl a comment to myself on a corner of the board, or take a photograph of a new diagram that resulted from an interactive class discussion.

On a course, where the delegates and tutor are interacting, feedback is easy. You need to be a pretty automatoned tutor not to notice it (but there are some truely awful tutors about though - the "I will read the notes to you" brigade). However, you need to have a system / scheme in place to make later use of the reactions and feedback. We're fortunate here - teaching programming languages in the way that we do, with examples written in front of delegates to show them not only the answers, but also how the answers were derived also leaves a footprint on the tutor's computer - a set of reminder files that can be reviewed later on, used to enhance materials, etc. And we do make use of that material; after a course, I'll often spend 10% more time on following up to enhance our methods and resources, and occasionally I can spend another 25%. Yes - that's a whole day of work as the follow up from a four day course. It is worthwhile, though - it IS very gratifying to to hear comments like "what excellent material" and "how do you come up with such ideas / ways of presenting?" on subsequent courses and, really, I have prior customers to thank for their ideas and feedback.

Feedback also makes for future business. Here are two reviews - one of ours, and one of someone elses:










And I'll give you a clue - we do hotel rooms and training courses. We don't do fishing trips.

Away from face-to-face events, feedback is rarer. At the extreme, how often do you find something really helpful on a web page, but fail to provide feedback to say "This was helpful"? If you're like me (brutal honesty here!), you'll so often find answers online but fail to provide a "yes - that helped". Of course, us web site providers don't always help you to provide feedback easily by providing a "like" button - Facebook have things like that so right, twee though it may look at first.

I started writing this article, thinking of "black hole answering" - where I (or you) provide answers to questions - on forums, via email, or via some other route, and the answer seems to disappear into the ether without trace. Frankly, if someone asks a question on a forum / starts a thread, I think it's rude of them not to come back with a follow up / "thank you" ... something at least to acknowledge the answers that have been written, often involving the investment of a great deal of time and thought into the answer. "TIA" - Thanks in Advance - on the original post is a poor substitute - but at least it says tells you the the "OP" - Original Poster - won't necessarily geel (s)he should get back and follow up.

By email, I think it's even ruder not to get back and say "thanks for the answer". If the question is one that solicits sales information ("please send me course information") and has been sent as a circular to half a dozen possible providers, I can sort of understand the lack of acknowldegement ... but if the question is a technical one which is being answered free, gratis, for nothing and with no prospect of business it's "IMHO" - in my humble opinion - unacceptable to the extent that I won't answer further enquiries from the same writer.

Anyway - I'm rambling. I started with the importance of feedback, and finished with it too ... but you probably notice the importance of a good and enthusiastic team too. And - yes - we have an excellent team who enjoy what they do.
(written 2011-04-30)

 
Associated topics are indexed as below, or enter http://melksh.am/nnnn for individual articles
G501 - Well House Consultants - Customer Service
  [72] On Customer Service - (2004-10-03)
  [91] On line every 24 hours - (2004-10-17)
  [126] Feedback shows the tip of an iceberg - (2004-11-22)
  [150] Confession - (2004-12-13)
  [189] Tuesdays and Fridays - (2005-01-25)
  [195] Customer service - examples to warn us - (2005-01-30)
  [233] Giving customers best value - (2005-03-02)
  [265] Business practise, 2005 style - (2005-04-03)
  [327] How far should our support go - (2005-05-28)
  [350] Want to be one better - (2005-06-17)
  [393] Trainer answers phone - (2005-07-28)
  [440] Upgrade! - (2005-09-09)
  [482] Different ways of selling - (2005-11-01)
  [552] Keeping Customers Informed - (2006-01-02)
  [566] May all your screw-ups be big ones - (2006-01-16)
  [569] Instructions for bright people - (2006-01-19)
  [609] Been on a course, but still not got it? - (2006-02-16)
  [621] And the staff put the icing on the cake - (2006-02-23)
  [628] Active Learning - (2006-02-28)
  [650] A person of few words - (2006-03-18)
  [717] A customer service company - (2006-05-11)
  [725] Better communication - (2006-05-19)
  [841] Forum help - a push in the right direction - (2006-08-21)
  [852] Eventful evening - a lesson in looking after contacts - (2006-09-02)
  [944] Just ******* Google it - (2006-11-25)
  [961] Products that our customers want more of - (2006-12-03)
  [966] CSL, KISS and RTFM - (2006-12-05)
  [1007] Friends and family - (2006-12-25)
  [1046] Bounce, bounce, bounce - (2007-01-20)
  [1262] Keep in touch with PHP, Perl, Python and old friends too - (2007-07-09)
  [1319] Customer feedback - lifeblood of a business - (2007-08-25)
  [1434] Market survey - to learn, to prove a point, or to sell your product? - (2007-11-17)
  [1446] An answer to a student asking 'Help' - (2007-11-27)
  [1516] Pictures you can use - for free - from our library - (2008-01-23)
  [1606] Sheep Shearers, Marathon Runners and Ocean Sailors - (2008-04-09)
  [1637] Providing exceptional service - and carrying on doing so. - (2008-05-09)
  [1835] 23:30 bookings and midnight checkins - (2008-10-12)
  [1985] Learning to program as a part of your job - (2009-01-10)
  [1991] Rules for a King - (2009-01-13)
  [2015] Service Excellence Awards - (2009-01-30)
  [2049] Why Choose Well House Consultants for your course? - (2009-02-20)
  [2102] What do people think of our Apache httpd / Tomcat course? - (2009-03-24)
  [2124] Building down expectations - (2009-04-09)
  [2236] Alumni - revisiting and supporting the old University - (2009-06-13)
  [2258] Questions I have been asked on answering the phone - (2009-06-26)
  [2530] Taking a knock over Santa - (2009-12-08)
  [2650] Getting a phone line changed ... - (2010-02-25)
  [2880] Getting in touch - Please allow me to see you when you are online - (2010-07-21)
  [2961] Initial handling of phone calls and walk in visitors - (2010-09-19)
  [3073] Customer Service - the boundary - (2010-11-27)
  [3103] Thank you - and Happy Christmas - (2010-12-24)
  [3294] It's not just about the jam in the sandwich - (2011-05-19)
  [3378] New product - ensuring that supply matches demand - (2011-08-03)
  [3808] Can you put names to faces? - (2012-07-19)
  [3835] The Information age - not yet truly with us? - (2012-08-12)
  [4077] Palty or Parliamentary? - (2013-04-30)
  [4078] Train works for me! - (2013-05-02)
  [4232] Not wanted here - hotel guests who will not be happy - (2013-12-30)

G310 - Well House Consultants - A better class of course
  [211] Look after your staff and they'll look after you. AOL. - (2005-02-12)
  [215] Open Source becomes mainstream - (2005-02-14)
  [219] Some unusual features - (2005-02-18)
  [224] YOUR application and YOUR data - (2005-02-22)
  [230] Course sizes - beware of marketing statistics - (2005-02-27)
  [292] Elegant languages - Perl, PHP, Python - (2005-04-26)
  [371] The training team that's looking out for you - (2005-07-07)
  [394] A year on - should we offer certified PHP courses - (2005-07-28)
  [497] I have a river to cross - (2005-11-16)
  [554] What backup is adequate? - (2006-01-04)
  [559] ''I don't know'' is sometimes a good answer - (2006-01-09)
  [577] Learning to program in Perl or PHP - (2006-01-26)
  [579] Short Linux and Perl courses for small groups - (2006-01-27)
  [646] PHP - London course, Melksham Course, Evening course - (2006-03-14)
  [726] In praise of training course delegates. - (2006-05-20)
  [1035] Longer hours and better value courses - (2007-01-15)
  [1453] What makes our courses special? - (2007-12-02)
  [1488] New trainee laptop fleet for our Open Source courses - (2007-12-30)
  [1576] Making PHP and MySQL training relevant to the course delegates - (2008-03-15)
  [1645] Seeing how others do it - PHP training - (2008-05-17)
  [1933] Learning to Program in C - (2008-12-10)
  [2010] How long should a training module be? - (2009-01-27)
  [2074] Weekday or Weekend PHP, Python and Perl classes? - (2009-03-10)
  [2084] Books and distance learning from Well House Consultants? - (2009-03-15)
  [2109] Why most training fails ... - (2009-03-30)
  [2187] Are we IITT (Institute of IT Training) members? - (2009-05-17)
  [2633] Why do I teach niche skills rather than mainstream? - (2010-02-13)
  [2762] Well House - Mission and Policy summaries - (2010-05-13)
  [3001] How will we present courses over the coming years? - (2010-10-17)
  [3385] Do university courses teach the right things for life at work later on? - (2011-08-10)
  [3419] Data that we use during our training courses, and other training resources - (2011-09-04)
  [3587] C++ Courses - do I get official certification at the end of my Well House course? - (2012-01-20)
  [4280] Making use of huge data, object orientation, unit testing and frameworks - (2014-06-07)
  [4558] Well House Consultants - Python courses / what's special. - (2015-10-28)
  [4583] Back in the saddle again - excellent open source course from Well House Consultants - (2015-11-26)


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Horse's mouth home
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Melksham Car Parking - current charges and limits
Some other Articles
Melksham Chamber of Commerce - grows to appoint new Press Officer. Welcome. Sam
Small scale improvement - big scale gain. And they CAN be done with local knowledge
Wanted - a look to the future
Melksham Car Parking - current charges and limits
The importance of feedback
SQL - Data v Metadata, and the various stages of data selection
Files or Databases? MySQL, SQLite, or Oracle?
Baby Pictures
Reybridge, Easter Monday
Easter on the Canal - near Melksham, Wiltshire
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This is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.

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