After listening to customer feedback, the company has reinstated local dedicated hire desk teams in all of its 30 depots across the country.
The idea is to bolster the existing customer service offering, giving customers the choice of how to interact with the company and allowing Nationwide to tailor its national service at a local level to suit customer needs.
Over the past few weeks, all of Nationwide’s customer-facing staff have undergone an “extensive” customer service training programme. According to a company spokesperson, Nationwide has delivered around 1,700 hours of training to more than 70 people, with each person receiving around 23 hours of training.
“They each completed six separate, bespoke training modules, delivered through more than 300 individual learning sessions,” said the spokesperson.
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Nationwide Platforms has also appointed “a number” of new recruits to form the new hire desk teams across the country, particularly in the London area. Others have been appointed through internal promotion.
Nationwide said that “extensive” customer research has shown a preference for local customer relationships and, while the business retains a centralised structure the new approach allows depots to foster closer relationships with their customers.
Nationwide Access chief executive Paul Rankin said: “Our goal is to make our people and our operation more dedicated to serving customers in their local area, enabling us to tailor our specialist service to put customers first. The result is an end-to-end service from the same friendly and familiar people, knowing that if you have a question or an issue there is someone dedicated in your local depot to find a resolution quickly. It’s reassuring to customers that when you call your local depot you are speaking to the same team of people each time, who know and understand your hire needs.”
