Member Article

Cestria excels at customer service

A North East housing association has proved that customer service is top of its agenda after being awarded a prestigious nationally recognised award.

Cestria Community Housing has achieved the Customer Service Excellence standard, making it one of a just a handful of associations in the region to do so.

Following a thorough inspection of all Cestria’s services, including interviews with staff and tenants, the association was awarded one of the highest scores ever achieved.

Cestria’s Customer Relationship Manager Lisa Coverdale said: “We are incredibly proud to have achieved the Customer Service Excellence standard and to do so with such a high score is just the icing on the cake.

“It is a reflection of the hard work that all our staff put in each and every day to ensuring we deliver the best possible service to our customers.

“What is most pleasing is that this was awarded to the whole organisation, not just our customer services department, which really shows that providing excellent customer service is embedded throughout Cestria, from repairs and housing through to finance and human resources.”

Customer Service Excellence is a Government standard which aims to recognise organisations that deliver outstanding customer service.

The standard focuses on five different areas - customer service, the culture of the organisation, information and access, delivery and timeliness and quality of service.

Organisations are judged on 57 individual elements, with Cestria awarded the highly prized ‘compliance plus’ score for 14 of these.

As part of the assessment process, Cestria was required to provide evidence of how it meets the requirements in each of the five areas, after which an on-site visit was carried out by official CSE assessor, Michael Lynch.

In his report following the visit, Mr Lynch praised Cestria for its work to improve the accessibility of its services through the development of a mobile phone app for tenants, and encouraging tenant consultation and involvement though working groups and meetings.

He also praised Cestria’s work with local communities through school projects, links with the Foundation of Light, jobs fairs and the association’s Community Benefit Fund, which makes donations to groups and individuals.

He said: “From talking to customers it was very apparent that they valued the approach used by Cestria Community Housing and indicated they were more than happy with the services provided.”

Cestria Chief Executive Paul Fiddaman said: “This is a fantastic achievement and demonstrates Cestria’s commitment to providing a first class service to all our customers.

“I’d like to thank all our staff for their hard work - this has been a real team effort and this excellent result is testament to the commitment of everyone involved.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Craig Downs .