SENIOR staff at Domestic & General (D&G) are engaging with their customers and finding out what they want by going back to the floor ahead of National Customer Service Week.

Managers at the Nottingham-based contact centre will be donning their headsets and joining their agents on the phones at the end of the month, to find out if their customers are receiving the best possible service.

Senior colleagues will be sitting with staff whilst they take calls at the Talbot Street offices, which employs over 700 people. The initiative has been arranged ahead of National Customer Service Week, which takes place during October, with similar activities being held across all of the D&G sites around the country.

The aim of the day is for senior staff to find out how their agents deal with a variety of calls as well as getting a feel for what they do on a day to day basis. They will give feedback on the way agents take and receive calls, make suggestions on how they could potentially improve their approach, see what the agents do in terms of showing best practice and also reward agents who are performing particularly well.

D&G staff who will be taking to the floor include Tracy Burrell, HR manager at the Nottingham branch. Tracy said:"This is the tenth year we have undertaken this initiative and it has previously been really successful. As a company, we are always aiming to continually improve the way we treat our customers to ensure we are providing them with the best possible service. The only way we can really see what goes on at grass roots level is to sit with our agents and listen to the work they do.

"Another big reason that we also like to go back to the floor, is because we want to see what our employees do on a daily basis, and what their working day is like. As a company, we place a big emphasis on how we look after our staff and we want to know that they enjoy their work and if there is anyway we can potentially make their jobs easier, which is another benefit to learning about what they do in more detail."