The Cumberland has won an international award for improving customer service.
The building society picked up the award for Best Continuous Improvement System at the prestigious Global OPEX and Business Transformation Awards in Miami.
It is the second year in a row that The Cumberland has received an award at the event.
Stephen Donne, head of operations at The Cumberland, was also a keynote speaker at the three-day conference and told delegates how there had been a focus on investing in training and supporting staff to identify and develop improvements that would make a tangible difference to customers.
The society said the time taken to approve mortgages has been slashed down to an average of 12 days and multiple areas have been streamlined such as simplifying the paperwork for relatives around bereavement.
The Cumberland is now focusing on initiatives within its care hub team who answer calls directly from our customers. Around 65 initiatives to ‘make life better for customers and colleagues’ have been identified, it said, including ensuring rotas anticipate likely demand at different times of the day to help reduce waiting times.
Richard Ellison, chief financial officer at The Cumberland, said: “Our award submission highlighted the levels of engagement from colleagues on our continuous improvement journey, and the success of delivering more than 140 process improvements resulting in increased processing capacity, reduced cycle times, and real cost savings.
“It’s an amazing achievement considering we only started this journey two-and-a-half years ago. And to get such validation from an external professional body for the way our people have applied themselves to operational excellence in support of growing and transforming our business tells us that we’re on the right path to a sustainable future and we’re getting things right for colleagues and our customers.”
