Claire Church, Director of Service Delivery at Auto Windscreens tells us about their focus on improving customer satisfaction by embedding a strong service culture, and how ServiceMark accreditation has helped improve customer satisfaction scores and reduce complaints:
Find out more about ServiceMark accreditation and organisational membership.
In today’s increasingly complex financial service environment, organisations are facing new and evolving challenges. The rising cost of living has significantly shifted the way customers interact, leading to more emotionally charged, complex and often prolonged vulnerabilities. Recognising this shift, one of our members, CA Auto Finance UK, took proactive steps to equip their teams with the tools, confidence and consistency needed to meet these demands, turning to The Institute’s ‘Handling Challenging Customer Interactions’ and ‘Introduction to Vulnerable Customers’ workshops.
CA Auto Finance UK, which had already embedded a strong training and development culture across its operations, noticed a growing number of more difficult conversations emerging in their contact centre. Through routine quality checks, it became evident that teams were finding it harder to get to the heart of customer concerns, particularly when dealing with longer-term vulnerabilities.
“Previously, we might have seen short-term vulnerability. But this is different” – said Kelly Manners, Senior Customer Operations Manager. Over the course of two weeks, 75 colleagues from across a number of customer facing departments took part in The Institute’s workshops. Team leaders and managers also joined the sessions, which provided an added layer of insight into how their teams were approaching difficult conversations.
While the organisation already enjoyed strong customer satisfaction and NPS scores, this training wasn’t about improving those metrics, it was about protecting them. “We wanted to get ahead, making sure our teams felt confident and capable, not just now, but as the landscape continued to change,” said Kelly.
Feedback from participants highlighted several standout benefits. Many valued the opportunity to revisit foundational skills in a real-world, practical context. Others emphasised the importance of having examples and scenarios that mirrored the nature of their own customer interactions.
By mixing participants across departments, the training also helped break down silos, foster greater collaboration and build a deeper understanding of the end-to-end customer journey.
Participants’ qualitative written feedback highlighted the value and relevance of the sessions, with comments such as: “Excellent course… delivered in an engaging and informative way,” “It sparked a lot of helpful discussion… gave an awareness of vulnerability internally as well as externally,” and “The trainer was fantastic -very engaging and relatable.”
Through a post-course survey, confidence ratings also increased from 7.1 to 9.3 after the Introduction to Vulnerable Customers training, and from 8.0 to 9.1 following the Handling Challenging Customer Interactions session.
Crucially, the independence and credibility of The Institute’s training helped boost agents’ confidence. “Because it was delivered by The Institute, it gave our teams reassurance that they were being equipped with best practice, particularly in situations where the right customer outcome isn’t always the easiest one.”
With eyes now set on achieving ServiceMark accreditation, CA Auto Finance UK continues to demonstrate what it means to empower their teams in a changing world.
Sara Herrington, Head of Customers, and Adam Clark, Executive Director of Customers discuss the benefits of organisational membership and the impact of Business Benchmarking, ServCheck and ServiceMark on their service strategy:
Glynis Hobson, Director of Customer Services, and Victoria Dunn, Customer Services Manager at Co-Ownership Housing, share their thoughts on Organisational Membership and how working with the Institute has helped them develop their service strategy through its research, thought leadership and networking opportunities.
Andy Page, Ruth Braysher and Holly Hudson of Cambridge University Press & Assessment discuss The Institute’s Professional Development.
Lucie Child, Strategy Lead – Customer Care at The Very Group, discusses the return on investment from The Institute’s Management Qualifications.
Jasmine Hilton, Regional Installations Manager at Wickes discusses the ServiceFocus suite of training and ServiceMark accreditation.
Colin Salmon, Contact Center Manager at the General Medical Council talks about their membership journey and achieving Service Mark accreditation with Distinction.
Mark Charlesworth, Contact Center Advisor at the General Medical Council discusses achieving Service Mark with Distinction.
Sarah-Jane McCausland, Customer Communications & Engagement Lead at Covéa Insurance discusses what it means to be a long-standing member of The Institute, the networking opportunities, and the impact of ServiceMark accreditation.
Watch the team at Unum share how the Professional Qualifications programme helps them develop key skills and capabilities and helped Unum put the customer at the heart of everything they do.
Participants:
Watch Andy Pymer, Executive Director of Finance and Regulation at Wessex Water, highlight how membership and ServiceMark with Distinction helped them achieve a high rank in Ofwat’s Customer Measure of Experience and Developer Services Measure of Experience league tables.
