Hello,
Welcome to the first edition of Customer Matters – your monthly newsletter highlighting what SMT is doing to improve your experience as our customer.
As a customer-centric business, we’re committed to making things easier, better, and more effective for you. This newsletter is part of that journey, bringing you along as we continue to enhance our customer experience.
In this edition, I’ll explain why SMT GB decided to join The Institute of Customer Service, what we aim to achieve through this membership, and, most importantly, why this is good news for both our current and future customers.
For those unfamiliar, The Institute of Customer Service is the UK’s independent professional body for customer service. Its purpose is to help organisations improve customer experience and, in turn, drive business performance. Membership provides access to a range of benefits, including benchmarking tools, training, accreditation, expert research, and industry networking opportunities.
SMT GB joined the Institute in December 2023, with a clear goal: to benchmark our current customer experience and drive measurable improvements. This allows us to establish a clear starting point and track our progress over time.
It also reinforces our commitment to putting customers first. As part of this journey, we are working towards achieving ServiceMark accreditation, an independently verified standard of customer service excellence.
ServiceMark is awarded based on both customer satisfaction and employee engagement in relation to an organisation’s service strategy. Achieving it demonstrates a long-term commitment to delivering high-quality service and maintaining consistent standards.
One of the key benefits of membership is access to The Institute’s Business Benchmarking survey. Many of you may have participated in our 2024 and 2025 surveys, which are sent to customers who have interacted with us within the previous six months.
The insights we gather are invaluable. The survey measures performance across 25 key areas, including Net Promoter Score (NPS), customer effort, and customer loyalty. All responses are anonymous, and the results help us clearly understand what we’re doing well, and where we need to improve.
This data allows us to focus our efforts on what matters most to you, while continuing to maintain the areas where we already perform strongly. In addition, The Institute provides access to expert training and industry research, enabling us to stay up to date with the latest trends and best practices. This ensures we make informed decisions and continue evolving our approach to customer experience.
Thank you for taking the time to read this edition, I hope you found it useful and insightful.
