Why did you wish to achieve the Customer Service Excellence Standard?
At North Wales Housing, we are committed to delivering outstanding services that meet the needs and expectations of our customers. Achieving the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) Standard was a natural next step in our continuous drive for quality and improvement. We wanted a recognised and robust framework to benchmark our performance and identify opportunities to enhance our customer experience.
The CSE Standard provides a structured approach to evaluating customer service across the organisation, which forms an integral part of our Customer Strategy. It is a credible standard which helps us to celebrate what we’re doing well as an organisation, and it also highlights areas where we can grow and improve. Working within its framework helps us ensure that we remain customer-focused, accountable, and responsive in everything we do.
What was your approach to assessment?
We planned a pre assessment using the self-assessment tool and felt that this was important for us as it was our first time working toward the standard, this meant we were able to ‘find our way’ and discuss our progress with our Assessor. We wanted to ensure we had involvement from across the organisation, recognising our colleagues are our biggest asset when it comes to delivering great customer service. We set up a small project team, as a group we reviewed the standard and identified colleagues who could support with different aspects of the standard. We held a session with all of our leaders in the organisation to raise awareness of the standard and to support us to gather evidence and identify partners for the stakeholder survey. We also involved our customers through our Residents Panel keeping them updated on our progress and involving them in the actual assessment with our Assessor.
What have you experienced as the impact/benefit of the CSE Standard?
The CSE Standard has and will continue to act as a catalyst for continuous improvement in NWH and help all of us ensure that putting customers first remains central to everything we do. The accreditation reinforces our reputation as a quality-driven organisation, helping to build trust and support collaborative working.
IMPACTS
Organisationally: The CSE Standard has and will continue to have a significant and positive impact across the organisation. It helps us continue to embed a more consistent customer-focused culture. Our performance has been assessed objectively, which will lead to clarity around expected standards in services, improve our communications and enable us to engage meaningfully with our residents.
Residents: For our residents, this means we provide a more responsive service to them, and they have a greater sense of being listened to and ultimately valued. Accreditation helps us to strengthen feedback mechanisms so we can tailor services more effectively to residents’ needs.
Colleagues: Our staff have benefited from greater clarity about customer expectations and their role in delivering an excellent service. CSE has fostered a sense of pride and ownership, as well as improved collaboration across teams. It also provides a foundation for development and empowers our staff to contribute ideas and become the driver of improvements.
The structured approach of CSE has helped us look more closely at our customer journey. As a result, we have identified opportunities to simplify systems, introduce new tools, and enhance accessibility. As well as improving efficiency, it will also help increase satisfaction levels across our service areas.
How did the assessment feedback support you?
We are using the areas for improvement to inform actions within our ‘Customer Strategy’.
We were pleased to see our strength areas recognised and this has provided us with assurance over some areas of work we have focussed on in recent years.
Why did you choose Assessment Services Ltd for your assessment?
- Assessment Services work with us to help understand what is needed to navigate the process and achieve excellent customer service,
- The process is efficient yet maintains very high standards,
- Assessments are cost-effective,
- The process is customer friendly,
- Assessment Services has a track record with over three decades of experience,
- We can track the three-year assessment journey by uploading and scoring evidence on AS online assessment tool,
- They love to celebrate customer success,
- The option to have a ‘pre assessment’ was important to us.
Author
Claire Shiland,
Director of Operations
