1. The Academy
  2. How The Academy Helps

What does the Academy aim to achieve? 
The Academy supports an organisation’s People Development strategy through the provision of learning, education and insight, providing tangible results and optimising customer service performance.


How does the Academy support customer service excellence and performance?
The Academy develops blended learning solutions that cater for the needs of all our customers, regardless of sector or specialism. Our unique suite of products get to the heart your strategy, optimising performance.  They are complemented by The Institute’s Professional Qualifications to develop critical people skills and behaviours that drive a consist approach in service delivery and enhancing the customer experience.


The Academy's purpose

The Academy is an established centre of excellence providing end-to-end delivery for your organisation’s customer service personal development. 

Through The Academy, we offer an extensive range of interactive customer service training and personal development programmes delivered by an expert team and in line with nationally recognised standards. Our focus is on improving the service knowledge, skills, confidence and capability of your staff at all levels, from front-end customer facing employees to managers and team leaders. Our programmes lead to tangible positive outcomes for the individual, their respective organisation and customers.

Our aim is to support your long-term vision and strategy, helping to improve organisational performance by enhancing the way you recruit, develop and retain employees, underpinned by customer service competence. 

Institute research shows that 67% of customers who had a great experience with an employee said they would buy again from that organisation, compared to 11% who had a bad experience.  With this as a backdrop, we use The Institute’s research, world class service models and insight to support your long term vision and strategy, through carefully developed people development programmes.

Our focus is on improving the skills, engagement and impact of your customer service people.  And, because 42% of customers who had a bad experience with an employee said they would stop buying products and services from that organisation, our range of development programmes provide the tools to enable your people to ‘get it right the first time’.

Our approach

Our ServiceFocus suite offers four courses that can be contextualised and tailored to fit the specific development needs of employees, managers and team leaders within your organisation. They provide a comprehensive development in the essential principles, skills and practice of customer service which are applied to your environment. 

The Academy also prides itself on maintaining high standards. All of our training courses are underpinned by independently recognised standards, and delivered by experienced training practitioners.  We deliver high quality, engaging customer service focused training, equipping your organisation to measure up to service excellence.  All courses and the delivery team are regularly quality assured and our robust evaluation process ensures we continue to be relevant, current and expert in what we provide.

Professional qualifications

Developing transferable skills and behaviours to improve perform

Our professional qualifications recognise the attainment of excellent customer service skills, knowledge and behaviours. An Institute of Customer Service qualification measures high standards of service, enabling you to demonstrate a high performance standard, and a commitment to continuous development.

Business Benchmarking

Providing the customer perspective

Business Benchmarking is a measurement of customer satisfaction that organisations can use to benchmark against national leaders in their sector and beyond.

Management qualifications

Customer service management and strategy qualifications

Institute of Customer Service management and strategy qualifications focus on a unique combination of customer service and management skills, maximising personal development whilst delivering tangible business benefits.

Case Studies

Warming to the customer service agenda

The industry has become more competitive over the years and we realised that bringing customer service to the forefront of what we do will improve customer satisfaction and give us a real competitive advantage.

Christian Oram Sales and Marketing Manager, Nu-Heat
Read More
See all Case Studies

How The Academy can benefit you

84% of customers say that customer facing staff need more training. How well prepared are your front-line and management teams when it comes to improving the customers' experience? Do they have the skills, training and capability to meet customer needs?

Are you looking for market insight?

Institute membership gives you exclusive access to customer service research across all sectors.

Learn about Research

Are you looking to set and raise your standards?

Our training and accreditation programmes can raise your service standards.

Raise your Standards

Are you looking for organisational membership?

We support some of the UK's leading businesses in improving their customer service.

Learn about Membership