• Kier Highways has retained its Customer Service Excellence Standard for the sixth year, and is now compliant with all aspects of the criteria
• Business was commended for a range of things, including; understanding its customers’ needs and regular stakeholder mapping
• Kier Highways is only UK highways maintenance contractor that holds the certification

Kier Highways has retained its Customer Service Excellence Standard certification for the sixth year running and, for the first time, is compliant with every aspect of the criteria. 

The Centre for Assessment (CFA) evaluated Kier Highways’ on the quality of the customer experience across five key areas; customer insight, culture, information access, delivery and quality. The CFA awarded compliance against all areas, as well as a further eight Compliance Plus marks which were awarded for the business going above and beyond.

The auditing process is rigorous and includes a site visit, face-to-face and telephone interviews with key customer, communications and quality staff and senior management from all contracts across the business unit.

CFA commended Kier Highways for understanding its customers’ needs through team collaboration, praised it for regular stakeholder mapping, ensuring that people were aware of any planned works and problems were mitigated at an early stage and also highlighted that it continued to work in line with Highways England’s three imperatives; Customers, Safety and Delivery.

Report feedback included:

“There was no doubt having spoken to several senior management during the visit that strong committed ‘customer focused’ leadership appeared to be in place. This dedication to the customer (at all levels) indicated that Kier Highways always wanted to put the customer at the heart of everything that they did.”

Natalie Geraghty, head of customer and communications at Kier Highways, said:

“Achieving this great result is testament to the good work our teams do to look after our customers. We’ve been on a journey with this audit and each year have achieved better results than the previous. To now achieve full compliance with every aspect of the criteria is fantastic. We just need to keep up the good work and continue to improve the customer experience.”

External auditors, CFA, awards UK companies and organisations the Customer Service Excellence (CSE) quality mark, a nationally recognised standard, developed by the Cabinet Office and designed to identify best practice and drive customer-focused change. Kier Highways has been part of this process of external recognition for the past six years and is proud to be the only UK highways maintenance contractor that holds the certification.