The University forWorld-Class Professionals

Facilities Central Mail Service

Customer Services Strategy

1 Introduction The Central Mail Service provide a wide variety of services to customers across the University – whether directly to the Estates and Facilities Departments, staff across Manchester Met, students or external visitors.

This strategy sets out our plans for delivering these services to our customers.

It explains what we will do to:

• better understand who our customers are

• improve the way we deliver services

• encourage our customers to contact us in ways that best suit their needs

• make sure our staff have the knowledge and skills they need

• put things right if they go wrong

• put this strategy into practice

We need to do things differently to succeed in today’s financial climate.

We must: work closely with our customers and our staff tosimplify the way we deliver services and make the best use of technology.

2 Mission, vision and valuesThe Manchester Metropolitan University mission as set out in the Corporate Strategy 2012-2017 is:

‘To be the UK’s leading university for world class professionals’

Estates and Facilities support the corporate mission with the following mission and vision:

‘To work together to deliver a value for money service, designed to improve service delivery through a

cost effective Estates and Facilities team’

The Central Mail Service will support the above corporate mission and vision through our Customer Commitment Statement and values. The commitment states:

However you choose to access our service, via email, telephone or face-to-face, we will ensure:

• A professional, competent and friendly member of the team greets you.

• The information we provide will be accurate and up to date.

• We have published standards and will be open about how well we perform against them, in addition to actively seeking customer feedback.

• All customers will receive a high-quality, consistent service to meet their needs.

Our The Services Group values are:

Honesty Open and transparent communication, where opinions are value and colleagues supported.

Excellence Right first time services delivered by adaptable, innovative and professional team members.

Accountability Take ownership to solve problems and make decisions without blame.

Recognition Of a job well done, of potential and achievement of success.

Teamwork Collaborative working in our teams to benefit the Manchester Met community.

Contents1 Introduction

2 Mission, Vision and Values

3 First Steps

4 Customer Experience

5 Understanding our customers and their needs

6 Customer groups

7 Why customers contact us

8 How well are we doing

9 Improving our service delivery

10 Making sure our employees have the right knowledge and skills

11 Putting things right if they go wrong

12 Putting this strategy into practice

3 First stepsThis is the first customer services strategy and provides a starting point to deliver excellent customer services. From this, regular reviews will take place to improve the overall experience for our customers when dealing with us.

4 Customer experience Positive customer experience is an intrinsic element of the work of the Central Mail Service. The Customer Commitment Statement and Customer Service Standards detail the level of service customers can expect.

The standards detail the following:

• Opening hours and contact details

• Service level agreements

• Access to services

• Feedback and complaints procedures

• Data protection information

We are currently conducting a range of surveys and reviews to gain customer insight in order to make sure that our customers are happy with the quality of our services. This is from the first contact up until we deliver the service.

5 Understanding our customers and their needsWe provide a wide range of services from sorting, distributing and processing letters and parcels, to collecting and shredding confidential waste and providing an internal courier service. Our customers use many of our services and many are in contact with us. Contact comes via email, telephone or face-to-face visits to the mailroom.

We are developing systems to help us understand the different types of customers we have. We can then use this information to make our services better to ensure we meet customer requirements.

We are responsible for the personal information we hold about our customers. We take this responsibility seriously. In line with the Data Protection Act, we:

• only collect information we need to deliver our services

• keep only the information we need to, and only for as long as we need to

• keep information secure

• make sure information is relevant and up-to-date

6 Customer groupsWe have conducted a customer profiling exercise to identify our key customer groups and to identify their common requirements, for example:

• Students

• Manchester Met staff

• External visitors

Grouping our customers together helps us to:

• better understand their needs and what is important to them

• plan our services to meet their needs

• deliver services in ways that best suit them

7 Why customers contact usThe main reasons customers contact us are as follows:

• Outgoing Mail Service - to notify or request support with bulk mailings, to obtain advice on the most appropriate product/service, to obtain final collection times

• Incoming Mail Service – to clarify delivery times, request a mail tray, help with tracking an item

• External Courier services – Domestic and Overseas

• Internal Courier Service

• Visit MMU Post Shop

• Enquiries relating to confidential waste

By recording customer contact as one of the above types, we can then use this to see:

• where we can improve our information and services, so customers can choose the most appropriate and efficient way to contact us.

• how we can utilise our current online service offering and look at how we can develop this to improve service to customers.

8 How well are we doingWe want to check and see how well we are delivering our services and how happy our customers are with them. We will do this using the following methods:

Customer feedback When we deal with customers, we will use this as an opportunity to ask them how well we are doing, what we can do better and how happy they are with our services.

Customer surveys Conducting annual surveys on part, or all, of our service provision.

Service statistics Information from our systems on, for example, how many people are asking for services, how often they contact us about it and how long it takes to deliver the service.

Customer Commitment Statement and Standards Periodic assessments about how well we perform against these standards.

9 Improving our service delivery To deliver excellent customer services, we need to:

• know who our customers are

• understand what services they need, both now and in the future

• ensure our service offer is continually developed to meet the needs of our customers

We want to give our customers the best services we possibly can. We need to know if they think that we are unhelpful, our services are poor quality or our services do not meet their requirements or expectations. We will use the information we have about our customers and the feedback we get from them to improve our services as well as through benchmarking.

We will do this by identifying the levels of service that customers expect and any problems they have with the way we deliver services. We can then plan how to make things better and deliver our services well. We will do the following:

• Make it easy and convenient for customers to contact us and access our services when they need to and in ways that suit them.

• Make sure that information we give to customers is clear and easy to understand in a format that is appropriate for them.

• Be clear about what we will do and when we will do it in accordance with our service level agreements.

• Whenever possible, give customers what they need in a single contact.

• Make sure that our procedures for delivering services work well and are reviewed regularly.

• Remove unnecessary paperwork and procedures.

• Use technology to better manage information and deliver services.

• Encourage our customers to be involved in improving services by giving us their opinions and telling us when we get it wrong.

10 Making sure our employees have the right knowledge and skillsTo deliver a high standard of service to our customers it is important that we have the right people, in the right jobs, in the right place and at the right time. We will make this happen by doing the following:

• We will develop our staff to make the best use of their talents and time, in a way that best meets the needs of our customers.

• We will train our staff so that they have the skills and knowledge they need to do their jobs well.

• We will make sure our staff are multi-skilled. This means they will be able to help customers with a variety of services rather than only knowing about a few.

• We will give our staff the right tools they need to do their jobs.

• We will make sure our staff have the information they need to help our customers and deliver services.

• We will listen to our staff and encourage them to work with us to improve services.

11 Putting things right if they go wrongWe know that sometimes things can go wrong. When our customers have a problem with how we have dealt with them or with the standard of our services, it is important that we fix it quickly.

Customers can contact us with their complaint in accordance with our formal Feedback Policy and Procedure. However, where possible we aim to rectify any issues informally and quickly.

As such we:

• identify common problems, implementing processes and procedures to stop them from happening

• make information available on our website so customers can help themselves

• train staff to deal with queries informally in the first instance

Should a customer not be satisfied with an informal resolution the issue can be escalated to the Assistant Facilities Manager (Mail) and/or Head of Facilities Management in accordance with the policy and complexity of complaint.

12 Putting This Strategy Into Practice This strategy will be reviewed annually and is supported by the following documents:

• Customer Commitment Statement

• Customer Service Standards

• Feedback Policy and Procedure

All members of the Central Mail Team will implement the policy.

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