National Customer Service Week - Service with Respect Day

We are proud to be supporting National Customer Service Week 2023.

Carpenters Group have always been very keen and vociferous supporters of the ICS ‘Service with Respect’ campaign.

Sadly, like many other organisations, we have seen an increase in the number of cases of aggression, threats and general abuse to our front-facing colleagues who are always striving to offer the best customer service possible, often in very trying circumstances and often when matters are outside of their control.

The cost of living crisis has undoubtedly had a significant impact on how customers treat front-facing colleagues and the demands for instant action and remedy are often unreasonable and unnecessary and can lead to difficult conversations with customers.

All of our front-facing colleagues receive customer service training in their induction at Carpenters Group and in recent months our colleagues have received further training on how to deal with difficult and demanding customers and complaints. We will not tolerate abuse to our front-facing colleagues as everyone deserves respect, even if the message being conveyed is a difficult one that the customer may not always want to hear or agree with.

Carpenters Group are very clear with all of our customers in terms of how we expect them to act and engage with us and our terms and conditions includes “to treat our staff with respect and courtesy”. If customers do not keep these responsibilities, we will terminate the agreement, and we have had to do this on several occasions. The protection and well-being of our colleagues is absolutely paramount and above commercial consideration, and we are pleased that on every occasion we have terminated a customer agreement our Insurer Clients have been fully supportive of our decision.

The main reason for complaints that Carpenters Group receive is the poor performance of the OICP. The Justice Select Committee have recently published a report on the impact of the whiplash reforms and the performance of the OICP. Please see the link for more information - https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm5803/cmselect/cmjust/1140/summary.html#