CalMac is first ferry company to pick up Contact Centre Association global award

A rigorous application and assessment process saw the department being scrutinised and audited by the CCA's teams over a period of several months.

The award guarantees CalMac's customers find the company easy to deal with, with early and late opening times, continuous review of technology and communications, exceptional customer service across all available channels and ongoing staff development to ensure it is always at the forefront of the industry.

"This is a huge achievement for CalMac and one which we are extremely proud to receive," said Sandy Crighton, CalMac's General Manager Customer Operations. "The team here has worked very hard to achieve this accolade and will continue to work hard to ensure that we live up to it.

"CalMac's customer care staff deal with all kinds of difficult scenarios all year round and always endeavour to achieve absolutely the best outcome for our passengers. I'm proud of the commitment shown by all of them.

"It's a great early Christmas present for the staff and the company as a whole."

In awarding the accreditation to Caledonian MacBrayne, the CCA said: "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.

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

CalMac's 46-strong customer operations team 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.

The company has been providing lifeline services to 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 to remote mainland areas and 24 islands across a 200-mile long stretch of Scotland's beautiful and wild west coast.

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 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.