Methods To Monitor Customer Service

There are many different methods to monitor Customer Service. For customers, they can provide feedback through various means, such as completing feedback forms at any stage of their journey, through the online complaints forum. Staff members are often encouraged to fill out digital questionnaires about various aspects of their jobs. These questionnaires are sent out to all staff on a regular basis. Staff also have regular one-to-one sessions with managers where they should be freely able to discuss any feedback, either positive or negative.

Once all the data has been gathered it will need to be analysed thoroughly to check for trends where we may be providing great or poor customer service. An example of this could be if the Jobcentre receive a lot of complaints about the wait time to be seen by the front of house. This tells the people reviewing the data that there is an area which we can improve on and action should be taken to rectify this and impartial discussions can be held to come up with solutions, in our office this means that during peak times (during opening times) coaches will help the Front of House by waiting at the front and meeting their claimants, which saves them from queuing and increasing customer Service. Positive Feedback can also be useful when considering resourcing as it may show that we have over-resourced and are not effectively using the resources.

When analysing the data it must be done with impartiality to ensure that whoever is reviewing the data is not doing so with any assumptions or agenda in mind. To achieve this it may be worth considering hiring an impartial, external team to achieve this. This ensures that all data is looked at equally and without an agenda, however if this was to be implemented you wold have to consider the financial cost of setting up and training a team to do this. Also, this method would be a ‘one size fits all’ method to cover all Jobcentres and customer facing businesses, but a more tailored approach may be needed to ensure all sites are getting all their needs met.

Another method to consider would be to arrange small teams within an office that focuses on resourcing and customer service. A benefit to this is that they can provide bespoke improvements to the office. They can also spend time gathering the customer and staff feedback, through personal staff/customer forums, which may highlight other options they may not have considered through questionnaires. A downside to this is that staff may not receive appropriate levels of training to review and analyse the data and may not have knowledge on how to implement resources.