Our Commitment to Customers
CASCAiD is committed to providing innovative and high quality career development software for use throughout the UK and internationally. We consider a high standard of customer care to be an essential part of our commitment to customers. As well as everyday contact with our customers through the normal course of our business, we encourage other forms of feedback such as customer surveys, interaction at exhibitions and training events, and direct response links from our website.
Quality: Products and Service
Our quality statement below explains the criteria we use for ensuring that customers receive the highest quality products possible. Our aim is that our programs meet the needs of our customers and end-users and are reliable, user-friendly and easy to install.
Products
Updates
The CD products – Kudos and Adult Directions – are updated annually, and new CDs distributed to all subscribers. Accompanying materials provide installation instructions (including for networks) as well as identifying new features.
The data in the web products – Kudos (online version), Adult Directions (online version), Launchpad and Careerscape – is updated three times a year. Program improvements are made annually.
Developments in all products result from user and customer feedback and from changes in the hardware available to customers. We gain feedback from a number of sources, including training courses, support calls, exhibitions and visits. When we plan new features for a product, we carry out extensive customer and user research to establish exactly how the developments should be implemented.
Testing
Procedures are in place to ensure rigorous testing of programs pre-release. This involves:
- Unit testing – the programmer is responsible for testing individual units of source code to make sure they are fit for use.
- Integration testing – to make sure individual software modules are combined and tested as a group.
- System testing – testing conducted on a complete, integrated system to evaluate the system’s compliance with its specified requirements.
- Compliance testing – to make sure the program runs on the advertised operating systems and minimum technical specification machines.
- Load testing – to make sure the program works under typical user loads.
- Installation testing – to make sure CDs work on all advertised operating systems and networks.
We carry out all new product development, and development of existing products, in accordance with CASCAiD’s product design guidelines. These ensure that design and function are carefully thought about and are consistent across CASCAiD programs.
Technical Support
A free helpline for technical and user support is provided as part of CASCAiD’s customer service. For more information on our technical support services, please click here.
Information
Resources
CASCAiD employs five writers/researchers to ensure that the occupational data in the programs is accurate, up-to-date, unbiased, comprehensive and appropriate. We also use freelance writers/researchers (members of the Careers Writers’ Association) for specialist areas of work.
Coverage
Our written data currently covers:
- 775 career descriptions (over 1,900 titles) covering all work areas and occupational levels.
- 89 general information articles explaining employment, education and training issues.
- 42 subject link articles covering GCSEs, A levels and work-related subjects.
- 107 career family articles, which group the careers into specific work areas.
- 561 case studies – interviews with people at work.
We also have 4,484 captioned photographs, and videos linked to over 350 jobs, taken at workplaces in the UK.
Accuracy
We check all our data every year, using primary sources of information, to make sure it is accurate and up to date. We send career descriptions to relevant professional bodies every other year for verification.
We add new titles regularly. The writers/researchers choose which titles to add from lists gathered via customer feedback, training courses, support calls, exhibitions and visits. We send all new descriptions to at least two independent experts for their approval. We remove careers and articles when they are no longer relevant.
CASCAiD does not carry advertising or take sponsorship of any kind, so users can be sure that the information they access through our products is unbiased.
Readability
Our aim is for articles to be as readable as possible. We carefully consider the intended audience – some articles are written specifically for younger students and some for adults.
Many words and phrases in the articles are linked to glossary explanations. The user can click on the word or phrase to see an explanation of it.
We have a house style guide and procedures in place to ensure that information is written in a consistent style, irrespective of the author.
Equal Opportunities
We are committed to supporting equality of opportunity through the use of stereotype-challenging photographs, case studies and videos. We always use terminology that is inclusive and non-discriminatory. In our programs, we include articles on issues such as:
- Equal opportunities for All Racial Groups.
- Health, Disability and Employment.
- Gender Imbalance in the Workplace.
- Mental Health and Employment.
- Refugees and Asylum Seekers (Work and Education).
- Age and Employment.
We research into whether particular health conditions and disabilities could present issues for people in certain jobs. This information is included in our products. We take care to ensure that users can be matched to all careers unless their health condition is an absolute bar (legally) to employment. We have full documentation, including advice from professional bodies, to support our knowledge of these legal bars. We also publish this information in a book called ‘Able To Succeed’, which is a guide to health, disability and career choice.
Apart from health conditions and disabilities, clients who complete CASCAiD programs are matched to all careers according to their interests and ability, regardless of their age, sex or race.
