Service NSW has been awarded the 2021 Best of the Best Award at the Customer Service Institute of Australia’s annual Australian Service Excellence Awards for overall outstanding customer service.
Service NSW’s dedicated Contact Centre unit won the Best of the Best award, the Customer Service Team of the Year and runner up for Service Excellence in large Contact Centre.
Service NSW Chief Executive Officer Damon Rees said the award recognised the Contact Centre’s Support Services Specialist (SSS) Team for Hypercare, created to give crucial additional support to communities affected by the 2019 bushfires.
“The Emergency Disaster Welfare Assistance Line was created after the 2019 bushfires to help customers navigate and access the assistance available from the NSW and Federal governments and non-government organisations,” Mr Rees said.
“The Contact Centre was traditionally accessed by customers for government transactions such as vehicle registration renewals but with just 24 hours’ notice, the team initiated the emergency service phone line to offer personalised support.
“The team managed unprecedented high call volumes and prioritised severely affected and vulnerable customers through hypercare case management, allowing customers to receive instant support by helping them to apply for financial assistance, food hampers and referrals to support services in their communities.”
Mr Rees said immediately following the bushfires, the State was impacted by flooding and then in March 2020 NSW had entered its first lockdown as a result of COVID-19.
“Facing multiple crises and competing priorities, the Contact Centre played a critical role in communicating with customers and providing essential services such as helping customers complete grant applications, organising relief hampers for people without food and connecting people to mental health and other support,” Mr Rees said.
To date, the team has responded to:
- 5500 complex border permit exemptions enquiries
- 3200 callbacks for the Online Disaster Assistance Finder, for customers who completed the disaster finder online and requested a callback
- 5800 COVID Hypercare cases, for customers who needed food boxes, were homeless during the fires or flood, assistance from NGOs for domestic violence or mental health reasons
- 4500 Rapid Relief Food Boxes for customers as part of COVID-19 pandemic support
- 1370 appointments for women’s Return to Work Grant, which provides customers with a one-off grant of up to $5000 to support women seeking to re-enter the workforce after a period of absence, total amount of $3.48 million with a 98 per cent thumbs up
- Organised almost 600 Skills Hub initiative appointments to help customers looking for work, need support to change careers or looking
