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Following the recommendations of Sir David Varney, Croydon LBC has gained accreditation for its customer contact centre. Anne Lewis explains how. Croydon LBC was successful in gaining the Customer Contact Association (CCA) accreditation in April this year. In doing so it has achieved recommendation 23 of Sir David Varney's service transformation report of December 2006, which recommended that all taxpayer-funded contact centres undergo formal published accreditation. A project team consisting of managers from the telephone and face-to-face service worked closely together to ensure that the requirements of the CCA Global standard (version four) were met. After attending the CCA's ‘planning and preparing' workshop, the group began to work through a gap analysis document to determine which of the requirements were already met and where there was room for improvement. This also helped identify inconsistencies in working practices so that these could be addressed. The CCA Global Standard is non-prescriptive but requires that each of the criteria is clearly evidenced and consistency is demonstrated. The accreditation has a wide scope and looks at various aspects of the operation. Each team member was given responsibility for one of the eight modules. * Module 1: Customer focus * Module 2: Contact centre performance & operational effectiveness * Module 3: Employee focus: recruitment, selection & retention strategies * Module 4: Learning, development and employee performance management * Module 5: Legislation, regulation & policies affecting your operation * Module 6: Third party and managed relationships * Module 7: Security & fraud prevention * Module 8: Implementing & managing contact centre technology For the customer focus module the team needed to demonstrate that there are processes to gather feedback from customers and that this is acted on. Performance and operational effectiveness involved showing quantitative and qualitative targets along appropriate planning and processes to meet these. Employee focus looked at the recruitment process and retention strategies as well as ensuring staff are aware of benefits and that their views were gathered with action taken. For the fourth module they needed to show that there were monitored personal development plans for each individual member of staff and that training and support is provided. The legislation module meant demonstrating staff had an awareness of legislation, that they apply it and there are processed in place to manage any breach. Contracts with third parties evidenced that these relationships are managed. For security and fraud prevention they needed to show that staff had been sufficiently vetted prior to employment and had received appropriate training on fraud prevention and data protection. The final module looked at technology with in the contact centre such as the IVR (interactive voice response) design and governance. The gap analysis was saved on a shared spreadsheet with evidence mainly indicated by links to documents or the Intranet. A red amber green status was given to each of the criteria with timescales for completion. In addition to helping show the status of the project, it was a good way of showing the assessor the evidence for the requirements. Regular meetings were held for the team to report on progress and support one another by sharing ideas and suggestions for moving things forward. HR, the back office and other colleagues in customer services were called upon for advice and evidence. All staff in the contact centre and face-to-face service were briefed on the CCA prior to the assessment. A member of the project team gave a presentation at team meetings and created posters to show what the CCA involved and the benefits of accreditation. It was important to create awareness for staff as any of them could potentially be interviewed by the assessor. It also helped reassure them that they would only be expected to answer questions openly and honestly. There are three organisations authorised to do CCA assessments. Croydon chose LRQA to do theirs and it was conducted over four days in the first week of March. The assessor interviewed the contact centre manager, four customer service managers and five team managers as well as customer service advisors from their teams. She also interviewed other managers in customer service including development and corporate complaints. This allowed her to gain a full picture of operations before viewing the evidence provided on the completed gap analysis document. CCA accreditation is about continual improvement and maintaining this means a reassessment every three years with an annual partial assessment in between. Preparing for the initial assessment provided an excellent opportunity for managers across customer service provided by Croydon LBC. It also shows there is consistency in working practice and commitment to continuous improvement. Anne Lewis is customer services manager at Croydon LBC

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Accreditation where it's due

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