Strong customer relations are at the heart of any support services business. We pride ourselves on our ability to work in partnership with our customers to deliver jointly agreed objectives. Our financial security is based on a number of key, long-term contracts. It is vital to our ongoing business success that we meet and exceed the different financial and quality KPIs that are used to measure the success of these contracts.
Ultimate responsibility for Group-wide customer relations lies with the Group Business Development Director. Each division has a Business Development director responsible for overall customer relations and each contract has an identified person responsible for liaising directly with the customer and monitoring performance on the agreed KPIs.
For the past five years we have participated in an annual performance review by the Ministry of Defence which measures our performance on all its contracts by quality, value, timeliness and eleven core criteria including responsiveness, management of risk, quality of relationship, flexibility and innovation. We have regular dialogue with our other customers to ensure we identify any potential threats to our relationships and resolve them in a timely manner.
In 2008 we commissioned an independent survey across all our customer groups. In response to this and other survey results we are taking action to improve the quality of service that supports our trusted to deliverTM reputation.
We have highlighted the following as areas of focus to ensure we achieve maximum success:
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Partnership - by achieving a real partnership both parties feel the benefits through added confidence that projects goals will be met.
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Cost efficiency - we are committed, wherever possible, to improve cost efficiency, this is extremely important for many of our customers particularly in today’s economic climate. Our ability to manage and reduce cost is evident in many of our long-term relationships.
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Added value - we want our customers to find us easy to do business with – open, approachable and flexible to deliver more than basic contract requirements.
The results of the research have shown us that we need to be more systematic in the delivery of customer service. We will commission regular reviews of our business partnering arrangements to identify areas that are working well and where action is required.
To ensure a consistent approach across the Group, we have seconded a Customer Relations Project Manager from the MoD’s performance review with key civilian customers. Through this we hope to establish Group-wide customer satisfaction benchmarks.