MEMBERS of a Chester customer care team have been put under the awards spotlight in a major business competition to discover the region’s most caring companies.
ACF Car Finance has been named as a finalist in the North West Contact Centre Awards involving more than 700 private company and Government-run contact centres.
The competition is organised by Call North West, which was set up almost 10 years ago by the NW Regional Development Agency and the University of Central Lancashire.
Now ACF Car Finance has joined the Bank of America and ScottishPower among the short-list of contenders for the Best Customer Experience accolade.
The overall winner of the prestigious prize will be announced in October this year at an Oscars-style awards event in Manchester.
According to Call North West, contact centres provide employment to about 5% of the entire working population in the region.
The aim of the competition, it says, is to gain wider recognition of the sector’s achievements, and to honour those call centres which are delivering outstanding levels of customer service.
The 25-strong team of contact centre workers at ACF Car Finance’s Chester Business Park headquarters deal with customers of the company from across the UK.
As part of the assessment procedure for the award, judges looked closely at how staff are trained to deal with calls and the quality of the service they deliver.
The Chester team, they decided, was a model of excellence in the friendly and helpful way it responded to callers, provided information, answered questions and gave confidence to customers.
Members of the team are recruited from the Chester area, and range in age from young university graduates to those enjoying a change of career in later life.
