Why did you wish to achieve the Customer Service Excellence Standard
We were already aware that we delivered great Customer Service but we wanted to formalise this quality, publicise our standards more widely to build the business and to have a benchmark by which to measure our service so that we continually assess and improve/maintain our high level of Customer Service.
The Approach to achieving the Standard
As Business Development Manager, I led the assessment as a project. After initial discussions with assessment Services, I attended a Network & Chat, this gave me some helpful hints as to how to proceed. I set the 57 criteria up in Excel on 5 tabs for the different areas to be focussed on. I then planned 5 MSTeams meetings with managers to go through an area at a time. We brainstormed the criteria within each section making rough notes about all the evidence we could think of. I then worked through the spreadsheet fleshing out all of our notes and collating physical evidence. I then uploaded on to the assessment portal. I attended N&C groups regularly and had chats with Lorna, our assessor to check I was on the right path.
The Impact / Benefits of working with the Customer Service Excellence Standard
As someone relatively new to the business the process has given me a greater understanding of areas of the business that I might not otherwise have been involved with. This threw up more ideas for the growth of the business which I was able to share with other managers.
Pursuing CSE has given our clients more opportunities to feedback to us and this has, in turn, driven us to adapt and improve our processes to give them a better customer experience.
On a more pastoral level, the award is also a source of pride for the team. They already knew they gave a good level of customer service but gaining the award, hearing the feedback, being involved in the assessment process has given them all a greater sense of ownership and responsibility for maintaining our high standards. This in turn translates to the best service we can offer our clients.
The Assessment Feedback
We have approached the ‘areas for improvement’ in the same way as the original assessment criteria. We identified the processes we should employ to meet the target for improvement and set ourselves a date by which we needed to have embedded the changes. We have then left ourselves with a period of time to assess whether the changes made are meeting the criteria ready for refresher assessment next year.
I also think that it’s best to get straight on to the areas for improvement because otherwise, once you relax and move out of the CSE assessment phase, it’s easy to lose focus.
Why did you choose Assessment Services as your assessment body?
“I had worked with Assessment Services in 2 previous roles.” – Jane Barrett
