March 8th saw LLS’ annual Customer Service Excellence assessment visit.
We are delighted to share that not only do we continue to meet the Customer Service Excellence Standard, we have now:
attained full compliance in four of the five areas of the standard (up from three full compliances and two areas with partial compliances in 2017)
we have retained all of our Compliance Plus awards and been awarded an additional Compliance Plus for our development in staff professionalism and attitude, specifically: “We prioritise customer focus at all levels of our organisation and evaluate individual and team commitment through the performance management system.”
The CSE assessor commended LLS’ ability to identify hard to reach and disadvantaged groups and individuals and developing our services in response to their needs, citing in particular DMUAspire and the work of the Library Disability team.
The CSE assessor was particularly impressed by the positive customer service culture which has led to staff feeling empowered to resolve customer enquiries. He also highlighted how the managers he met demonstrated a good understanding of customer needs and illustrated this with interesting examples of how they support customer groups.
The assessor noted how busy the library was, and how engaged students were in our spaces, which he attributed to our students feeling positive about the service we offer.
This positive result is a testament to the commitment of LLS staff to offering a high quality of frontline support to our customers, as well as commitment to developing enhanced services to meet the needs of you, our users.
LLS is ‘Compliance Plus’ in the following areas of the Customer Service Excellence Standard:
We have developed customer insight about our customer groups to better understand their needs and preferences
We make particular efforts to identify hard-to-reach and disadvantaged groups and individuals and have developed our services in response to their specific needs
We have made positive changes to services as a result of analysing customer experience, including improved customer journeys
There is corporate commitment to putting the customer at the heart of service delivery and leaders in our organisation actively support this and advocate for customers
We use customer insight to inform policy and strategy and to prioritise service improvement activity.
We can demonstrate our commitment to developing and delivering customer – focused services through our recruitment, training and development policies for staff
We prioritise customer focus at all levels of our organisation and evaluate individual and team commitment through the performance management system
Library and Learning Services has held the Customer Service Excellence award since 2011. The standard has five areas of assessment with 57 criteria for assessment. LLS is fully compliant in all criteria in four of the five areas, due to the importance we place on learning what our customers need and developing services accordingly, our engagement with customers, the fact that we have embedded commitment to customer satisfaction across the department, the development of our service standards, and the measurement and sharing of those standards.
If you would like to know more about Customer Service Excellence please contact Amanda Holyoak via aholyoak@dmu.ac.uk.
“The foundation of this tool is the Customer Service Excellence ® standard which tests in great depth those areas that research has indicated are a priority for customers, with particular focus on delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism and staff attitude. There is also emphasis placed on developing customer insight, understanding the user’s experience and robust measurement of service satisfaction.”
