Pictured: Back row, l-r, Helen Ondrak-Wright, Helen Roberts
and Scott Riley. Front row, Pete Betts
Leading Midland's housing provider whg have been celebrating
after being named in the Top 50 Contact Centres in the UK.
The Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service is an exciting
initiative designed to create a benchmark for customer service
excellence and works in partnership with GfK Mystery Shopping.
whg's Customer Contact Centre, set up in 2008, received 200
mystery shopping calls over a two month period. Questions
ranged from simple enquires to more complex scenarios.
Colleagues were unaware that the process was taking place,
proving the consistency of the service provided to customers.
whg will now receive a report detailing how they compare with
other national contact centres in the UK, along with a 'road map'
with operational recommendations.
The exact placing in the top 50 will be revealed next month at a
gala dinner in London.
Helen Roberts, whg's Customer Services Manager, said: "We
decided to enter whg into this league table to see how we compare
against call centres outside of the housing sector. We were
keen to see how we fared against private sector call centres, many
of whom will be large scale, national operations.
"We will use anything we learn about our own performance and
industry best practice to enhance what we do already. To be placed
in the top 50 in the UK is a huge achievement and a testament to
our extremely competent customer service colleagues."
The group set up its Customer Contact Centre three years ago and
performance has improved year on year. The team of 23, including
full and part-time colleagues, handles 4,000 incoming customer
enquiries per week and are responsible for 500 outbound calls.
whg was the first business of its kind to launch an 0300 number,
which means customers always pay a local call rate, even from a
mobile or when abroad, to increase accessibility to all.