Steps

The CCA (Customer Contact Association) is the global professional body for contact centres.  Their high profile awards programme celebrates organisations and individuals that are achieving excellence through innovations and are committed to driving improvements within their contact centre operations.

Steps and Birmingham City Council (BCC) have been working together on a Customer Service initiative that was shortlisted in the CCA Award category 'Most Effective Training Programme'.

Earlier this year, Birmingham City Council engaged Steps to provide a suite of soft skills programmes tailored for all customer facing staff in their contact centres and neighbourhood offices - some 720 staff including senior management.  Each programme was designed to both engage delegates and build on the considerable experience and success already in existence at the Council. 

Steps engaged with the delegate group right at the beginning - during the research and development phase. Canvassing Council staff for their experiences and identifying with them key areas for development.  Ideas and experiences gained here formed the starting point for a series of dramatic scenarios that were subsequently presented in learning and development sessions by actor/facilitators from Steps.  Involving staff in the development of the programme ensured high levels of engagement and ownership.  This was their programme - their opportunity for personal development and sustainable, transferable learning - and their opportunity to build on existing successes in delivering excellence in customer service at Birmingham City Council.

Contact centre staff, neighbourhood offices and senior management came together in delegate groups for the first time - giving them the chance to meet each other, understand each others roles, breakdown silo mentalities and identify their contributions to shared organisational goals.  Senior managers attended their own bespoke drama based programme designed to enable their personal leadership role in delivering Customer Service. They looked at developing their own skill-sets and engaging their teams. Critically, they also looked at and created meaningful, practical, local solutions that will enable the Council to sustain the momentum of the Customer Service initiative so that learning is embedded and excellence in Customer Service is sewn into the fabric of Council culture.

Training had never been delivered in this way at Birmingham City Council. Such was the feedback from the ongoing programmes that delegates clamoured to attend the programmes and attendance levels surpassed Birmingham City Council's expectations.  The expectations of delegates and the Birmingham City Council Training Team were also surpassed - with sessions receiving a 97% positive rating.

The training has also been endorsed by the Institute of Customer Service (ICS).

We are continuing to look at ways to develop our relationship with Birmingham City Council and are thrilled to have played an integral part in their success story.