Arvato’s shared service centre in Swansea scoops national customer service award

Arvato’s shared service centre in Swansea has won the Customer Engagement accolade at the 2018 Welsh Contact Centre Awards, following a record year for customer satisfaction.

The 30-strong helpdesk, which acts as the first point of contact for 22,500 civil servants working across the UK for the Department for Transport (DfT), achieved a 98 per cent customer satisfaction score against a target of 85 per cent in 2017. The team handled 120,000 enquiries last year and reduced average call waiting times to less than five seconds.

The business outsourcing partner delivers fully standardised HR, payroll, finance and procurement services to the DfT and its executive agencies at the Sandringham Park site in Swansea.

The awards, which took place on Friday, 9th March, recognise the achievements of organisations across the Welsh contact centre and shared services industry. The Customer Engagement category rewards the delivery of exceptional levels of customer service.

Mathew Copp, Operations Director Central Government, CRM Solutions UK & Ireland at Arvato, said: “Our Swansea centre is providing a fully standardised, back-office service for the DfT and its executive agencies for the first time in the department’s history and this award is testament to the hard work and commitment of our customer service team.

“Our goal is to help civil servants devote more time to meeting the needs of people up and down the country, and working their feedback into a new ’10 steps to excellence’ programme has helped us enhance the services we provide. We look forward to delivering further improvements in the years ahead.”

The Driver and Vehicles Standards Agency (DVSA) became the latest DfT agency to join the shared service centre in October 2017, joining the Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) and the Driving and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). Arvato employs over 200 people in Swansea, with more than 25 people starting across IT, customer services and programme support in the last six months as operations ramped up.

Arvato is one of the world’s leading business outsourcing companies with over 50 years’ experience and employing more than 68,000 people across almost 40 countries. The business has more than fifteen years’ experience in the public sector, which includes award-winning partnerships with local government authorities.