TORBAY Council is celebrating after not only retaining its prestigious Customer Service Excellence award but increasing its areas of outstanding practice to five — the highest of any public organisation in the South West.

The Customer Service Excellence standard is awarded by the Home Office to organisations that demonstrate high levels of customer delivery, timeliness, information, professionalism and staff attitude.

In addition to the CSE accreditation, the council has also increased its compliance plus status from three areas of outstanding best practice to five.

Compliance plus recognises practices that exceed the requirements of CSE and are viewed as exceptional.

The five areas of outstanding practice identified by the assessor were:

the level of support shown by all areas of the council in improving customer service

staff professionalism and attitude

learning from mistakes

using customer feedback to inform policy and strategy — the assessor was particularly impressed in the way that the customer access team (formerly the web team) has joined up with customer services and using the data to continue to improve the website for customers

the way in which the council evaluates how customers interact with the organisation and uses the information to make service improvements.

Cllr Ken Pritchard, member for business planning and governance, which also includes the council's customer first team, said: "The council's customer first team has been busy preparing for the stringent assessment, which involves collating hundreds of items of evidence and a visit from an approved assessor, and we are all delighted that they have continued to improve the level of customer service it provides to the residents of Torbay.

"This is testament to the high level of professionalism, dedication and customer care shown by our officers in the customer first team including Connections, the call centre and the newly accredited customer access team (formerly the web team)."