The Customer Service Institute of Australia (CSIA) just had their annual Australian Service Excellence Awards (ASEA) last night and we’re thrilled to have secured one win from the nine categories we were finalists in . The Vehicle Sales Team won Customer Service Team of the Year (Medium) for their achievements in transforming the vehicle purchase experience for our customers, including a re-designed sales journey and call flow. In the Customer Service Manager of the Year category, our very own Mark Valana from AccessPay was the runner-up and was awarded Service Hero.
CSIA and their annual awards
Each year, CSIA holds its prestigious awards event to recognise excellence in customer service. It’s all about appreciating top performers, innovation and best practices. With awards at a variety of levels (including for people, projects, teams, service centres and organisations), CSIA chooses from hundreds of nominations.
Our commitment to exceptional service is central to everything we do at Smartgroup. We work hard to deliver a fantastic experience for our customers every day. That’s why it’s such an honour to be recognised again by such a leading organisation, and why we’re so excited for our finalists.
Recognising some special people
For this year’s awards, we’re pleased to have four finalists in individual categories:
Mark Valana – Service Hero
Mark acts as our Customer Service Manager for two of our brands, AccessPay and Advantage. He leads the way for positive change, fostering a more customer-centric culture within his team.
In the past year, Mark has helped increase service levels (SLA) and Net Promoter Score (NPS) in some of our busiest call periods. Mark also restructured his contact centre to run more efficiently, leading to better outcomes for our customers.
Sarah Haas
Sarah is our Chief Operating Officer, leading the entire operational team that provide service to all Smartgroup customers. Sarah uses her strong leadership skills to take charge of her large-scale teams, guiding them to deliver a brilliant service experience.
In the last 12 months, Sarah’s been heavily involved in some of our most crucial projects. She played a vital role establishing our new voice of customer function (including the creation of the new Customer Advocate role), and helped us with more effective resource and business planning.
Craig Adamson
Our General Manager of Operations, Craig, drives outstanding service across multiple teams. In the last year, Craig’s played a vital role in key projects, including launching a new vehicle calculator and a new vehicle sales journey.
He was also integral in the development of our Customer Advocate, who uses feedback to address issues and offer more support to our customers.
Stephanie Murphy
Stephanie provides great frontline service as a Team Coach in our Client Payroll Team. She makes sure her clients receive the highest level of care, combining processing skills with energy, passion and focus.
No matter who Stephanie’s working with, her exceptional customer service skills always shine through. In the past year, she’s taken the lead on a number of critical training tasks, including for our Customer Relationship Management System.
It’s a team effort
We’re also delighted to honour our other finalists, with some great collective performances leading to three team and two project nominations.
The AccessPay Customer Service Team has delivered outstanding service to customers, particularly in our busiest time of year. The Smartsalary Administration Team embraced robotic process automation to increase service standards and productivity. Our Vehicle Calculator Project has helped us simplify a complex product (novated leasing) a great deal. And we’ve used our Customer Journey Mapping Project to make further improvements for our customers, especially online.
Well done to everyone involved!
We’d like to offer our congratulations to all our finalists, and a big thank you to CSIA for recognising our efforts.
If you’d like to check out the full list of finalists, you can take a look on CSIA’s website here.