Customer Services gets top trumps for third year with Excellence Standard

Continuing their drive for excellence the Council’s Customer Services team receive an award for the third year running as they get to grips with the customer journey.

Making the Council ‘journey’ a pleasant experience for the customer and delivering a quality service has led to the team being awarded the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) Standard this month.

The assessment process, conducted by G4S once a year, covers all aspects of the service delivery including customer insight, culture, information, access, timeliness and quality of service.

The team were assessed on their customer engagement, consultation and satisfaction, their leadership, professionalism and attitude as well as quality of service.

The report said that the Customer Services team recognise the importance of providing a high quality and timely service as well as continuing to make service improvements by working in partnership with other service areas.

Regular customer focus groups are held to help ensure the Council are delivering a good service for customers and changing that service when the needs of the customer change.

For example, self-service payment kiosks and better online payment facilities were introduced after the decision was made to close the cashier’s office in February last year.

June Shurmer from G4S said: "Your commitment to using techniques that afford you to gain deeper insight into customer groups and their needs has supported you in not only being able to demonstrate continued compliance, but that you have shown continuous improvement.

“Your understanding of the benefits of the customer's emotional journey led to improved customer journeys through identifying key journey steps and 'moments of truth'.”

Councillor Richard Ball, Cabinet Member for Customer Services said: “Retaining the CSE standard at a time where customer needs are changing, budgets are being cut and more pressure is being put on our services is something to really be proud of. I can honestly say our customer services team really want to make a difference and are committed to helping and assisting people that contact us. I am so pleased they are getting the recognition that they deserve. Here’s to the next three years."

The Customer Service team were also awarded the ‘People Development Award’ at last year’s South West Contact Centre Forum Awards for encouraging their staff to choose a positive attitude and look after their wellbeing.

13 February 2012