Hot on the heels of being recognised in the Best 100 Company awards and the ESTAS, Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) has passed its triennial review of the Government-backed Customer Service Excellence Award with eight areas of customer service praised by the Assessor.
For the past nine years, the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) Award has been a driver of continuous improvement at TDS. It has helped the award-winning deposit scheme to create a first-class service in every aspect of tenancy deposit support for landlords, agents, tenants and the wider PRS community.
Unlike other awards, the CSE award is not achieved by application entry. Recognition can only be gained following a rigorous audit that assesses how well an organisation responds to challenging targets in several key areas of service over time.
Award-winning customer service
As part of the audit, TDS was benchmarked against a national framework of customer satisfaction and recognised as outstanding and exemplary to others in areas that included service delivery, information, professionalism, staff attitude, customer insight, social responsibility, complaints and first contact resolution.
“We have never stopped striving to deliver an exceptional service to our customers, stakeholders and partners – even during the challenges of the 2020/21 pandemic. There was no downtime in service, even with the unforeseen move from office-based customer service to home-based and digital support,” commented Steve Harriott, Chief Executive at the Dispute Service.
“Despite this, in 2021, all eight areas of the TDS customer service were praised by the Assessor, which is testament to the ongoing hard work of all our colleagues in securing the award. This is an incredible achievement and demonstrates that customer service excellence is at the very heart of TDS.”
Read more about TDS Awards here: Award-winning tenancy deposit protection
TDS’ Customer Service Excellence Project Team comprises colleagues from various departments, which ensures customer excellence is delivered throughout the organisation at every touchpoint.
This year’s project team included;
Michael Hill – Assistant Head of Innovation
Owen Griffiths – Junior Support Analyst
Sanam Khan – Operations Manager, Resolution
Sara Hesp – Lead Adjudicator
Sonia Gherra – Head of Customer Operations
Setting the benchmark in tenancy deposit protection
TDS continues to set its own benchmarks in the tenancy deposit protection sector for customer service and continues to respond to emails and phone calls in unparalleled times. Their dispute resolution times echo the same commitment to fast response and excellent service levels.
The recently published Annual Review from the Dispute Service goes into further detail on the organisation’s recent awards and how it showed exceptional resilience and adaption throughout 2020 and 2021. A copy of the report, which includes interesting data on common disputes in private rentals, can be downloaded for free at: TDS Annual Review 2020-2021
Are you enjoying easier, faster tenancy deposit protection from an award-winning team yet? Discover why other agents and landlords are switching to the free TDS Custodial scheme. Join today.
About the Customer Service Excellence Award
- In 2005 Cabinet Office Ministers commissioned an independent review into an existing customer service standard, the Charter Mark scheme. It recommended that a new customer service standard, based on the key drivers of satisfaction, should be developed to replace Charter Mark. The Government’s response to these findings was published in December 2006 which accepted the key recommendations, and Customer Service Excellence was born.
- The Customer Service Excellence quality mark aims to make a tangible difference to service users by encouraging organisations to focus on their individual needs and preferences.
- For an organisation to be recognised as achieving Customer Service Excellence they must be successfully assessed against the criteria of the standard by one of the licensed certification bodies.
About TDS
Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) is a Government-approved scheme for the protection of tenancy deposits; TDS offers both Insured and Custodial protection and provides fair adjudication for disputes that arise over the tenancy deposits that we protect.
TDS Academy: We provide invaluable training in tenancy deposit protection and disputes for agents and landlords through the TDS Academy as well as joining with MOL to provide the Technical Award in Residential Tenancy Deposits. Click here to see upcoming TDS Academy dates.
TDS can only comment on the process for our scheme; other deposit protection schemes may have a different process/require different steps. Content is correct at the time of writing.
These views are those of the author alone and do not necessarily reflect the view of TDS, its officers and employees.
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