NHS Direct delivers top class customer service
09 Sep 2009
NHS Direct has taken part in the UK’s biggest ever call centre benchmarking exercise to find out what its patients and the public think of the service and to understand ways of improving the experience for future patients.
NHS Direct has been named one of the top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service following an exercise that involved 300 mystery shoppers using NHS Direct and reporting back on the service they received.
Performance was rated according to customer service criteria including timeliness, ease of use, reliability, staff knowledge and personalisation. The calls reflected different enquiry types from simple requests to more complex enquiries, over several days and at different times. The results from the mystery shopping exercise are now being analysed and the top performers will be announced next month.
NHS Direct has been operating for ten years, providing health advice and information over the phone and via the internet, and is available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.
Satisfied callers
NHS Direct handles over 14,000 calls a day (5 million calls a year) and has over 9,500 visits a day to its website self assessment tools. A recent user satisfaction survey¹ found that 96% of callers were satisfied with the way NHS Direct handled the whole process and would use the service again.
The Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service study was conducted by independent market research company GfK NOP and commissioned by the UK’s Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service. The programme is organised by Call Centre Focus magazine and sponsored by Genesys and Noble Systems, to raise customer service standards in the call centre industry.
Our service
Nick Chapman, NHS Direct Chief Executive, commented:
“We are always keen to know what our patients think of the service we provide, and finding ways of improving the service we give. This independent survey is a very useful addition and a fantastic opportunity to benchmark where we are in relation to other providers.”
Simon Thorpe, Programme Director for the Top 50 Call Centres for Customer Service, commented:
“This on-going benchmarking survey represents a landmark for the call centre industry, with over 50 of the UK’s top call centres prepared to put their reputations on the line in order to raise service standards for their customers. We would like to congratulate NHS Direct for their excellent performance which has resulted in them becoming a 2009 Top 50 Call Centre for Customer Service. We hope this initiative will inspire other call centres to improve their levels of customer service to reach the standards set by our Top 50 members.”
