A North East building society has been praised for its services to its customers and the communities it serves at a recent industry awards ceremony.
Darlington Building Society, which has 10 branches across Teesside, County Durham and North Yorkshire has won the Customer Services Award and Community Services Award at the industry-recognised Mortgage Finance Gazette awards in November.
The Customer Services Award comes as a ‘Service Excellence’ framework has been introduced and implemented across the Society over the past 12 months to give a collective focus for every team member and ensure every department is in line with its goals.
Sarah Horley, director of service excellence, explained: “This framework is based around PRIDE; a Personal Responsibility to Inform and Deliver Excellence. This ensures the focus is on the customer experience and our colleagues adapting their behaviour and communication around them, rather than customers fitting around our processes.
“Through this, we are able to get to know our members in more depth, giving us the opportunity to recommend ways to improve our service and products as well as updating them in a way that suits their preferences.”
The building society’s recently appointed vice-chair Bob Cuffe said: “This is an exciting time for Darlington Building Society, recently winning at the North East Marketing and Money Age Awards for our products and campaigns, but these awards for our service to both customers and the community are even more special.
“This service, through our internal initiatives and external support to the communities we serve is at the heart of everything we do, and something we’ll be building upon through an upcoming upgrade of our branch network.”
The Society, which was founded in 1856, is Big On Community with staff at all levels having the opportunity to spend two working days volunteering for local causes which can be anything from giving a park a facelift to helping at foodbanks.
For more information, visit www.darlington.co.uk
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