The Consumer Council retain Standards for Inclusive Service Provision and Customer Service Excellence

In working to provide inclusive services to customers living in vulnerable circumstances, we have again been recognised by the British Standards Institution and achieved certification to its Inclusive Service Verification scheme (BS 18477). This covers practices around the identification of customer vulnerability, inclusive design of products and services, and data collection, protection and sharing.

This is the second consecutive year we have achieved BS 18477, following its initial award in 2021; the first organisation in Northern Ireland to attain the accreditation. 

We have also been evaluated against the Customer Service Excellence ® Standard; a Government recognised accreditation scheme developed to offer service providers a practical tool for driving customer-focused change within their organisation.

We were assessed on the quality of the customer experience across five key areas; customer insight, culture, information access, delivery and quality. 

Following this recent annual review, we have retained the Standard for the fifth consecutive year since 2017. In doing so, we have successfully maintained all of the existing Compliance Plus and Compliant elements of the Standard, and built on last year's score with an additional 2 Compliance Plus awards. This brings our total Customer Service Excellence score to 22 elements graded as Compliance Plus and the remaining 35 graded as fully Compliant. We have not had any elements graded as a Partial since June 2017, nor have we ever had any elements reduced.

Retaining the award highlights the commitment the Consumer Council team shows in ensuring we deliver excellent customer service to our customers.

To find out more about our dedication to customer service and accessibility visit the corporate responsibility section of the Consumer Council website.