Riverview Retirement Community

PROJECT DETAILS

In the midst of COVID-19, Riverview Retirement Community wanted to reengage with their residents, identify the best ways to communicate with them, and create actionable next steps to do so.

Receiving a 94% response rate to the audit? That was just icing on the cake. 

“On behalf of the Riverview Retirement Community Board of Directors I am writing this enthusiastic recommendation for Sarah Schwering and s-squared Marketing & Communications.

In early August 2020, the Board of Riverview Retirement Community engaged Sarah and S-Squared Marketing and Communications to do a comprehensive audit and analysis of our campus communications. Our goal was to improve the overall communications with our residents, resident families, and the general public. We specifically tasked Sarah with analyzing and recommending ways in which the Riverview Management Team and Riverview Board could improve in these areas of communication.

To accomplish this goal, Sarah surveyed our targeted population of residents, Board members, and resident family members. In only a two week period, Sarah was able to get an astonishing 94% return rate on these surveys, thus ensuring very reliable data. While working with our older population of residents, Sarah was polite, respectful, and patient—even giving out her personal cell phone number to allow residents to ask questions if needed (which they did!). Because of this, our residents had a high degree of confidence and trust in Sarah and the process, which helped account for the tremendous return rate on the surveys.

She is professional, gets things done when she says she will, meets schedules and budgets, and brings energy and a very positive spirit to her work. Riverview values our new relationship with Sarah and s-squared Marketing & Communications, and have already hired her to do some additional projects for us. We recommend her highly and with great enthusiasm.

From the data collected, Sarah developed a comprehensive written report summarizing her findings including the data to back up those findings. The report was over 150 pages long, and was very helpful to those on the Board that wanted to go into depth. However, the most valuable part of the report was a concise summary of the things we were doing well, the things that needed improvement, and most importantly exact action steps to reach that improvement. Furthermore, these action steps were accompanied by a timeline in which to accomplish them. Riverview has been working on these action steps and are already seeing the positive results of their implementation. In short, the quality of the work that Sarah produced was of the highest quality, and more importantly to us was actionable.

The last thing Riverview wanted was an academic study that would be read once and then gather dust on a shelf. We are very pleased that instead we received a document that is already providing a functional roadmap for communications improvement on our campus.

Sarah has been very enjoyable to work with on this project. She is professional, gets things done when she says she will, meets schedules and budgets, and brings energy and a very positive spirit to her work. Riverview values our new relationship with Sarah and s-squared Marketing & Communications, and have already hired her to do some additional projects for us. We recommend her highly and with great enthusiasm.” – Steve Walker, Riverview Retirement Community, Board Vice-Chair