City News

The NEC, Birmingham, has received national recognition for its approach to handling visitor feedback at a top industry award night, beating strong competition from McDonalds, bus and coach company City Link, and the Jan Cavelle Furniture Company.

Louise Thomas, Visitor Liaison Manager, was honoured with the title of Customer Service Complaints Manager of the Year at the National Customer Service Awards, held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, London, on Tuesday evening (18 September).

Judges presented Louise with the award in recognition of her exceptional work within The NEC Group Visitor Experience department.

Since joining the team, Louise has introduced The NEC’s first system for recording, tracking, monitoring and analysing visitor feedback, enabling it to be used as a powerful strategic tool to improve the visitor experience.

The strategy is based on listening to visitors, involving them in discussions and acting on their comments.  Initiatives which have already resulted from Louise’s hard work include producing visitor-friendly feedback handling policies, transforming the style and language used in responding to visitors, and managing Visitor Experience projects. 

Louise said:  “I am completely overwhelmed and delighted.  This is the greatest recognition we could hope to receive for all of the hard work and planning that that has gone into this programme at The NEC.”

“This is amazing for me personally, as well as for the whole Visitor Experience department. This award demonstrates the level of quality we are consistently looking to achieve.”

Lynn Fox, Visitor Experience Manager, said:  “Louise has been a genuine asset to our team and has done a remarkable job in transforming the way that visitor feedback is handled and managed.”

“The overall Visitor Experience programme is so important to us because we want our customers and visitors to prefer our venues over our competitors because we provide everything they need.  We want them to enjoy the time they spend with us and for them, coming to one of our venues should be like coming home.”

The NEC Group IT Service Desk team were also honoured at the ceremony, receiving a Highly Commended award in the Customer Service Team of the Year, Telecommunications and IT category. 

Sue Wilson, IT Service Desk Manager, The NEC Group, said: "This is the first time an NEC IT Service Desk has entered a competition of this type and we are extremely proud of their success and how this underlines the team's objective over the past year to improve the speed and quality of service they provide to the business."

The National Customer Service Awards provide companies with opportunity to celebrate the effect and impact of customer-service, showcase their success stories, and highlight improvements that have been made within their organisations.

Winners in other awards categories included big businesses as diverse as Vodafone, Sainsbury’s and Natwest.