CalMac secures 'Global' recognition for customer service standards

The UK's largest ferry operator has been awarded Global Standard Accreditation for the helpfulness and professionalism of its customer operations staff.

CalMac's 46 strong customer operations team was given the much coveted quality assurance mark by the Contact Centre Association (CCA).

The company joins more than 300 private and public sector organisations across the UK who have been recognised for the quality of the customer experience they offer.

CalMac has been proving lifeline services to the communities up and down the west coast for 160 years. Last year the company carried more than 4.6 million passengers and 1.2 million vehicles on 49 routes linking 22 islands with mainland ports.

The accreditation report from the CCA said the CalMac customer contact centre "is a competent, well managed, highly customer focused operation."

"The centre makes a positive contribution to the aims and objectives of a highly customer focused, organisation, which has and continues to embrace change and continual improvement, typified by its development and excellent use of social media and major system changes which are under development."

The accreditation involved surveying more than a third of the contact centre staff on a range of customer focused processes to ensure a consistent and professional approach across the centre, and also included closely auditing the the daily workings of the operation. Every year the team handles more than 300,000 calls and manages social media and web based customer enquires around ferry bookings, amendments, claims and complaints.

The company was praised for introducing a range of new customer initiatives to improve the overall CalMac experience, many of which were as a direct result of customer feedback or suggestion.

"First impressions last, so it vital that our front line customer care and contact centre staff get it right. I'm delighted that all the hard work our staff have put in to making this area of the business better has paid off," said CalMac's Commercial Director, Cathy Craig.

"We have been working hard on a number of areas to improve the customer experience. We now operate longer hours to suit our customers life styles better and have developed new shift patterns to meet customer demands. Our investment in new technology makes for quicker response times and our commitment to using social media as a customer communications channel to keep them updated is proving very successful."

The accreditation report concludes:

"It was very clear that CalMac is managing and delivering a very customer focussed operation. It was encouraging to see that throughout the report the desire for continual improvement was evident both for the centre and for the customer."

This is just the latest in a long list of recent accolades for the company including Ferry Operator of the Year at the UK National Transport Awards 2014.