Celebrating Service Excellence

Here at ABa we’re passionate about helping our clients improve their customer service. We design, implement and manage a wide range of customer experience (CX) measurement tools to help businesses improve and understand their service offer, and we capitalise on every opportunity to review our own practices making sure our clients and our Assessors receive excellent service from us.

Last week (Monday 7th – Friday 11th October) played host to the Institute of Customer Service’s (ICS) annual ‘National Customer Service week’. For one week each year the ICS encourage organisations to raise awareness and consider the role customer service plays in their business and in the wider context of the UK economy.

Each year all of us at Head Office take part in lots of activities and talks, to remind ourselves about what great customer service looks like. This year was no different and with some great themes, we were able to think about what these looked like for us.

Monday – Insight

Insight is a word that is no stranger to us - we provide invaluable insight for each client, specific to their business needs and KPIs. We work with all stakeholders to understand which customer experience measurement tool is best suited to meet their key objectives. Combining this with the innovative technological capability of our in-house Tech Team, we build bespoke data capture and reporting platforms to share insight in an engaging, timely and actionable format.

Tuesday – Skills and Capability

With a multi-talented office and team of quality mystery shoppers, Tuesday gave us time to reflect on our shared and individual skills. It goes without saying that mystery shopping requires a good memory and an eye for detail, but we also need to have a shared understanding of customer service, empathy for frontline colleagues and great time management skills to ensure all of our clients’ visits are completed in the agreed timeframe, whatever the weather!

Wednesday – Recognition

Wednesday gave us chance to celebrate our ‘Colleague of the Month’ nominations and reflect on the importance of feeling appreciated and valued. Employee engagement is intrinsically linked to better customer service; happier employees are more productive and complete day to day tasks with greater positivity. This positivity is infectious and ripples out across an organisation’s workforce and customer base. We cultivate positive, personal relationships with our mystery shoppers and make sure they know we value the work they carry out for us.

Thursday – Leadership

Within our industry, we firmly believe that we set the benchmark for the highest quality, bespoke customer experience measurement programmes that offer more than an external measurement of service standards. We role model the behaviours our clients want to imbed in their organisations and we share our passion for placing customers at the heart of every business, working hard to help our clients lead the field in service excellence.

Friday – Trust

Trust plays a big role in our business. For colleagues to take on board feedback gleaned from any customer experience programme, and for these programmes to drive cultural change, it is of paramount importance that every end-user trusts the data source. We have complete faith in our mystery shoppers and the work they carry out for us, and we spend time with frontline colleagues explaining how we build this trust. We get to know our mystery shoppers personally and build a professional relationship where every mystery shopper understands the importance of providing credible, accurate insight.

To find out more about what we do, please get in touch with ABa via the details below.

Danielle Sones Experience Director danielle@aba.co.uk / 0161 431 1221