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United Kingdom - 30/07/09 Lowestoft College Achieves Customer Service Excellence Standard On 27 May 2009, following a successful assessment by SGS United Kingdom Ltd, Lowestoft College achieved Customer Service Excellence. This government standard helps those delivering public services put their customers at the core of what they do. The success follows the college’s achievement of the Charter Mark in 2006. As a further education college, Lowestoft delivers a wide range of course opportunities to a diverse group of customers, including employers, further and higher education students, schools and partners. “Our key challenge is to meet the needs of all our customers,” says Ruth Harrison, Head of Quality and Workforce Development. “We chose Customer Service Excellence because we wanted to maintain the key customer focus in our organisation: to make sure our customer service was right and that we were maintaining standards.” Lowestoft prepared for Customer Service Excellence by setting up a small team who took the desk-based work they prepared for Charter Mark and performed a gap analysis to see how best to meet the new Customer Service Excellence criteria. An SGS United Kingdom Ltd auditor visited the college for a pre-assessment, which helped to outline the areas for review. “The assessor was very helpful. The process gave us the evidence we needed and led us to review our existing systems,” says Ruth Harrison. “For example, we looked at the learner journey to find out whether all our learners, no matter which point they entered the college, received a parity of experience. We worked closely with Student Services to monitor the effect on their service.” Now, after the successful implementation of the Customer Service Excellence standard, the college is enjoying the benefits. Aside from boosting the college profile, achieving the standard has helped to raise staff morale, especially in reception and student services, the front line of customer service. “Maintaining the focus on customer services in our organisation is of prime importance to us. Sometimes it’s easy in an educational establishment to think it’s all about the education we provide. But there are a lot of people involved in customer service and this standard makes us all think hard about how well we deliver such service,” adds Ruth Harrison. SGS United Kingdom Ltd SGS House 217-221 London Road Camberley GU15 3EY 01276 697999 01276 697696 SGS United Kingdom The SGS Group is the global leader and innovator in inspection, verification, testing and certification services. Founded in 1878, SGS is recognised as the global benchmark in quality and integrity. With more than 56,000 employees, SGS operates a network of over 1,000 offices and laboratories around the world. |
