It’s Good to Talk

A question was once asked in a meeting I was in, if a company, or a department within a company, doesn’t have any complaints, then does that mean they’re doing things well?
The first answer is to say ‘yes, they must be, surely no complaints shows this’. Another view might be ‘maybe they’re not, but their customers don’t see the point in telling them, or don’t know how to’.
It was at this starting point that three years ago, Financial Services set upon a journey to try and get a true picture of what our customers really thought of us. This started with a process of actively seeking feedback on what our customers think of us, how we can improve our service, and how we can let our customers know that their feedback really can help us improve the service we offer.
While we felt we were good at what we do, we acknowledged that there is always room for improvement. To get some external input, and for an indication of our commitment to customer service, we applied for a chartermark in customer service excellence. After a year of hard work, this was awarded in summer 2014, and after continued effort, the award was successfully renewed in summer 2015, and most recently, last week was awarded for 2016.

The award isn’t just about having a trophy, albeit lovely and shiny, to show off, however. The main principles of the award lie in our efforts to give our customers as many opportunities as possible to provide feedback, changing our service or processes where possible, and letting our customers know that their input can make a real difference. This leads back to my original point – if you wanted to leave feedback, good or bad, for an organisation you deal with regularly, let’s say your high street bank, other than speaking to someone in your local branch, would you know how to do it? And would you be confident it would make any difference?
We’ve tried to give our customers as many avenues as possible to give feedback on the service we offer. These include: feedback forms on emails (‘how was our service?’), email, customer comment cards, a steering group with staff from different departments on it, and in January we held our first Financial Services Open Day, which we felt was a great success.

Changes the Student Finance Office have made as a direct result of customer feedback since we started this process include:

• “The location of the Student Finance helpdesk in Student Central is too open” – We have moved the Student Finance helpdesk to make it better for the students we see and provide more privacy.
• “It would be great to pay my tuition fee in instalments” – Providing flexibility and ease to the student payment experience is essential. We have offered direct debits for many years, but we are now in the process of implementing a Recurring Card Payment system. This provides the student the ability to pay in instalments either with a credit or debit card.
• “The signs for the opening hours for your helpdesk in Student Central aren’t clear” – We have now changed these to explain our opening hours and give details of how to contact us outside our opening hours, by phone, email, or seeing the iPoint

We’re keen to stress however that our efforts to improve the service we offer won’t ever be ‘done’. The emphasis is always on continuous improvement, and we’re still keen to get feedback, good or bad, on our service. So if there’s anything you’d like to tell us, then get in touch, as Bob Hoskins once said, it’s good to talk.