British Council promotes Customer Service excellence
By Salome Modebadze
Monday, November 18
The British Council Customer Services Coordinator, Salome Shalamberidze, is only 23 but she was voted Customer Service Professional of the Year of the British Council on the global level. Together with her team she has been fostering trust among customers, inspiring them and encouraging them to do more business with the British Council.
Salome has also been involved in new large-scale teaching projects and trained teachers to maximize their contribution to customer satisfaction in the classroom.
A teaching center was opened at British Council a year ago, and after an 8-month internship, Salome became a customer service coordinator responsible for introducing new customer service procedures to the Georgian team. Her customer service team implements global standards in the Georgian office.
Stressing the importance of motivation and enthusiasm in customer service, Shalamberidze told The Messenger that it is absolutely necessary to understand the customer to ensure that they receive high-quality service.
“This nomination was really exciting for me and I would like to develop even more,” Salome told us. Currently, the British Council has opened a vacancy for Customs Service Assistant. Salome says enthusiasm is among the main criterion a candidate should have apart from the relevant university degree, to make the team even better in the future.
According to Salome, the mission statement of customer service throughout all the branches of the British Council is to create trust between your customers, inspire them and make it easy to do business. “So the Georgian service proved to be excellent in all these terms,” she said.
The biggest achievement was the increase of Mystery Shopping tables which included face-to-face communication, email and a telephone conversation. Moreover, Georgia moved 20 steps up in the global rankings. “So, it was a great result for our country,” Shalamberidze told The Messenger.
The British Council operates in more than 100 countries worldwide. Marketing and Communications Coordinator of British Council, Eka Pakhuridze, said it was a tough and critical selection, especially for a small country like Georgia, explained Pakhuridze while praising the qualities of Salome.
“But the quality is there. You can see that this young lady did a great job to set up a customer service team and to do the best for the customers internally and externally,” she added.
The British Council paid attention to this award because they believe Georgia is a very customer-oriented country traditionally, but the customer service is not very good right now. Thus, they want to somehow show that customer service is the key in any organization. It is important to have professionals at every business with top level standards.
