Surrey County Council Customer Service Excellence
Surrey County Council Customer Service Excellence
Read Impact Factory's Customer Service Training
Impact Factory has an established reputation for partnerships with local government and it was a pleasure that we were able to include work with Surrey County Council.
Variety being the spice of our lives at Impact Factory, how much more variety could we wish for than to be invited to work with 200 staff from the Shared Services Centre on their customer service skills.
As part of their People First Vision, Surrey County Council paid particular attention to the role of support services when they envisioned their shared Services Centre in 2005. There were two considerations for the Shared Services design and implementation: to improve customer service and to enhance the delivery of efficiency savings.
The Impact Factory team - which included Julie Wales, Trixie Rawlinson and Jeremy Todd - created a series of lively half day workshops, so that Shared Services staff would both enjoy and engage with all the ways they already provided excellent customer service and learn new tools and techniques to develop those skills.
By delivering into the strength of feeling people have who deal with costumers all day, we had a great platform to explore the ways that emotional buttons can be so easily pushed. Equally, we understood the passion that both the Council and their staff had about delivering the best possible service to their customers.
We explored how people could prevent themselves from being wrong-footed to develop the exemplary service offered by many - plotting ways to skilfully sidestep tricky issues, so that Surrey's tax payers continued to get best value from their local council.
Practical, interactive and lively - one complaint we didnt mind getting, was to be asked to keep the noise down from the laughter coming from our room.
There may have been much laughter, but heartening and serious results were reported back to us. As a responsible borough, naturally value for money was high on their wish list - monitoring and evaluating their training investment, the response was overwhelmingly positive.
Customer service is a current buzz phrase often given a great deal of lip-service but not much else. Just the opposite is true at Surrey and Impact Factory felt privileged to have been part of their People First Vision and support excellent customer service throughout the county.
If you would like to talk to us about a Customer Service programme, or any of the other professional personal development work we do, call us on
+44 (0)20 7226 1877
or e-mail us at
enquiries@impactfactory.com
Customer Service
