Leeds pick up award for best customer service

02/10/2009

O2 in Leeds has beaten off competition from all over Europe to scoop two top prizes in the European Call Centre of the Year awards.

Friend of Forward Ladies and O2 Customer Service Director Cheryl Black, who is based at the company’s main office at the Arlington Business Centre, won the prestigious award for European Industry Champion. She was described as ‘a leader, manager, go-getter and achiever whose key objective is to deliver a customer service experience that is second to none across four contact centres and outsourced management activity in the UK.’
O2 has more than 20million customers in the UK.
Cheryl has said that her passion for customer satisfaction is driven by a sense of fair play:   “If people are paying for something, it is only fair that they get the service they pay for. We insist that our advisors call customers by their names if we are talking about one of them. This emphasises that they are not just numbers.”
She is also determined to change the perception that working in a contact centre is a job with no future. She says she has known many people who have worked in centres and gone on to hold management positions in a whole range of areas. 
O2 also won the award for Best Use of Technology for a Jacada Desktop system which the judges felt had delivered very strong benefits in both customer service and advisor efficiency.
The objective was to improve customer service satisfaction by reducing the handling time of calls and “getting it right” first time. It was also designed to make advisors’ work simple and more interesting. Judges said both these objectives had been achieved and costs had also been reduced.

Cheryl Black will be speaking about the imporance of good Customer Service at our event on 5th November in Leeds. Find out more