A HOUSING association in Worcester has become one of just five in the county to receive a hallmark of excellence.

Worcester Community Housing (WCH) has been formally credited with the Government’s new customer service excellence (CSE) standard.

Awarded by the Cabinet Office, CSE is the new national standard for customer service excellence and replaces the old chartermark.

It has been developed to offer public services a practical tool for driving customerfocused change and particularly looks at how organisations develop customer insight, understand customer experience and measure satisfaction.

WCH achieved a very high level of compliance with the standard and John Thurgood, of SGS, who carried out the assessment on behalf of the Government, said: “Worcester Community Housing can be proud of having met the new customer service excellence standard with a very high level of compliance.

“They demonstrated excellent practice and also showed that staff are dedicated and are prepared to ‘go the extra mile’ to deliver good service.”

Speaking of the achievement, customer services director Jean Dalziel said: “Everything we do here at WCH is about our customers.

We are committed to making sure they get quality services and a high standard of customer care and this award confirms that we are doing just that.

“The cabinet offices assessor had some amazing things to say about WCH and the work we do for our customers, which is great, but there is still more to come.

“We are committed to making sure customers remain at the heart of our service planning and delivery.

“We will work to make sure we give them all they expect and more.”