Let’s know the rest, we are the best:

RAJA has won the award “Voted Customer Service of the Year 2021”! Excellent customer service is the central element of our work. In fact, we have not done anything different in the past year. We see our task as being able to offer the right solution for every customer at the right time. Many clients come to us with very specific concerns, while for others the solution only develops through dialogue.

And then everything changed…

Of course, we can’t say that everything went according to plan in 2020 either. When we decided to have our customer service assessed in 2020, we knew what we were getting into. Actually. Then in March, everything was different: within a few days, just like most other companies, we had to learn a lot, especially when it comes to mobile working.

Our award team, which was internally responsible for the organisation of the Customer Service Award, was of course confronted with unexpected challenges: How do I reach all employees with this topic? Can we now expect our colleagues to face this additional challenge at all?

So we asked and got only positive answers.

Advertising in our own ranks

The team really came up with some great campaigns for this and got creative. To ensure that the message reaches everyone equally – colleagues in the office as well as those at their desks at home – all the necessary information was simply “filmed” during the evaluation period for the award:

The award phase

The requirements were clear: Between May and July, we received a total of 225 mystery test requests via all channels (phone, eMail, social media, chat…). Very different scenarios are tested and evaluated: In consultation, sales and after-sales, up to 15 different criteria were evaluated using a points system. The focus was on: the interpersonal level, the quality of the exchange and the availability.

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How are we doing?

Everywhere in the house we were tuned in to the evaluation period: Garlands, posters and motivational slogans adorned the office, corridor and at times the wall of the house, the award drinking cups grinned at us from the desk and the kitchen cupboard. The idea with the videos was simply continued, so that even those in mobile work were always up to date. The information about what exactly was expected of us was carried by the Award Team to the individual departments via the respective representatives. The “hard factors”, such as the time within which an email must be answered, the availability by phone or how much time we have to respond to an enquiry on Facebook, were or are easy for us to control ourselves and were already in line with the RAJA standard (Service Excellence) before applying for the award. For us, customer service always comes first. The exciting question is, how do the test customers rate us in the “soft factors”? How will the customer contact be received in terms of advisory skills, friendliness, conversational skills, problem-solving behaviour, product knowledge, eloquence and empathy?

Nose in front – final spurt

Accordingly, the award team was excited on the phone when the agency (Armonia Germany) informed them about the interim results. The joy was all the greater when it was announced: RAJA had indeed come out on top. The detailed feedback, in point scores and step-by-step for each of the criteria assessed, gave us a really valuable impression of how our customer service is received “on the outside”.

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you for this structured feedback!

A further and gratifying learning: our self-perception and the external image were very congruent. The few points for which the test persons did not (yet) give the highest score were no surprise to us! In the second test phase, we were all able to go one better.

The announcement: And the winner is…

With success. The final of the customer service competition “Voted Customer Service of the Year 2021” took place in an online award ceremony on 4 November 2020. Managing Director Maturin Craplet together with presenter Julian Button revealed the winners of the first German edition for all viewers. And all of us at RAJA are proud that we made it even under the special pandemic conditions: voted CUSTOMER SERVICE OF THE YEAR 2021! A great confirmation of our work!

More about the award

The organiser is Armonia GmbH. The customer service audit is already known from France, Spain, Morocco, Tunisia and England. In 2020/ 2021, the first edition of the German audit took place with 19 participants.

The press says about our victory: