Council honoured for dialogue with customers

The Council has just won a special 'gong' from Govmetric - the system used to monitor customer satisfaction - for making the most of its communication with customers.

This latest accolade builds on last year's achievement when the Council won the Govmetric Council of the Year Award 2009.  

Govmetric presented the new award to the Council in recognition of: "ongoing efforts to maximise customer engagement using a creative and relevant approach with amazing results."  

The organisation praised the Council for not resting on its laurels after last year's win, and paid tribute to staff for improving the response levels and quality of feedback from those visiting the Customer Service Centre at the Civic Centre.

Govmetric officials said: "By using question/comment cards to capture customer feedback, and with the continued dedication to staff participation, Southend have been able to significantly improve their service delivery which has resulted in much improved and more representative satisfaction levels." 

Southend-on-Sea Borough Council's Executive Councillor for Corporate Support Services, Councillor Andrew Moring says: "Congratulations to our staff and our customers for together helping us achieve this excellent recognition. 

 "Our terrific success last year in winning the Govmetric 'Council of the Year' award prompted our staff to work even harder to make sure we were doing all we could to obtain, and act on, comments we received from customers.

"As a result, we developed extra options for the way customers could choose to give their feedback. This has yielded extremely positive results, and led to our new award.

"We would like to thank our customers very much indeed for taking the trouble to give us their responses - a vital tool to help us continually to monitor and improve our services. We very much value their contribution in helping us all work together towards our vision of creating a better Southend."