THERE were some pretty tough contenders for the Service Excellence Award.
But when it came to it, there was only one winner, Central Heating Services, which provide comprehensive maintenance and installation services counting many housing associations among their customers.
It has a great reputation for customer service, facilitated by job tracking systems allowing provision of rapid response and quality service.
The Farnborough headquartered company which has a training centre in Basingstoke, came out in force for this year’s event, having won the INSPIRE10 Business of the Year accolade 12 months ago.
The company’s managing director Barry Caton said: "We brought a lot of staff with us this year, because without them we could not achieve what we have done"
Customer service is something that Barry takes seriously. In fact he says the company is committed to providing outstanding levels of service and meeting customers’ needs 24 hours a day. Its call centre handles an impressive average 500 calls a day.
"It's a team effort. If you don’t work as a team, you can’t achieve service excellence" said Barry. "We work for 40,000 customers, looking after 40,000 properties and we have built that up over a long time"
This latest award won by Central Heating Services came just two weeks after the company moved to its new 7,500 sq ft headquarters in Farnborough.
Last year CHS set up a training unit at Roentgen Industrial Estate, in Basingstoke and have this year extended it’s base in the borough to 5,000 sq ft, where a branch office is also located. Barry said: There we train not only our own staff, but external people as well. It’s going really well and it’s all part of our growth.
The other two finalists for this award were YBC Cleaning based in North Lane, Aldershot, offering commercial cleaning services, for offices, factories, hotels and schools, along with Woodlands & Hill Brow, which has care homes in Ewshot, near Farnham ,and in Church Crookham.
