Customer service commitment


Customer service – the NCFE way

NCFE is passionate about providing exceptional customer service and exceeding your expectations. We think our approach to customer service makes us different – easy to do business with, flexible and responsive.

Check out the following ways that we strive to achieve this, including:

  • giving you your very own dedicated contact at NCFE
  • communicating in plain English, without jargon
  • early publishing of our fees!

That's just a taster, read on for more…

Communication

To communicate effectively, we’ll:

  • be easy to contact during our office opening hours[1]
  • allocate your centre a dedicated Centre Support Assistant responsible for dealing with all your enquiries and give you their direct line and email address. In case they aren’t available, we’ll also give you the contact details of your Centre Support Assistant’s ‘buddy’
  • publish the direct line phone numbers and email addresses for all our employees on our website (under the ‘contact us’ section). If you can’t access the website, you can phone our main number and our receptionist will put you through to your Centre Support Assistant
  • provide information in plain English – we use everyday language and avoid bureaucratic language, jargon and acronyms
  • provide our publications and assessment materials in the Welsh or Irish language, or in an alternative format, where appropriate and on request.

Efficiency

To help you to progress your candidates from registration to certification as easily as possible, we’ll:

  • acknowledge or respond to any phone message, email or letter within one working day of receiving it
  • have your Candidate Information Packs available to download for free from the NCFE website 
  • confirm approval for any additional qualifications or awards you want to deliver within 5 working days of receiving your completed notification form
  • allocate an External Moderator/Verifier within 10 working days of candidate registration
  • provide online assessment for qualifications which have multiple choice external assessment
  • send you multiple choice external assessment results within 10 working days
  • send you results for other types of external assessment within 25 working days of the cut-off date for marking
  • award Direct Claim Status for certificates if you meet our published quality criteria
  • send you certificates and/or letters of unit credit within 10 working days of receiving the signed certificate claim form. Current performance turnaround time of 1 day*
 
Support and information

To help you to deliver NCFE qualifications and awards effectively, we’ll:

  • allocate your centre a dedicated Business Development Manager and Business Development Officer who can talk to you about your centre’s curriculum needs
  • publish our fees for the forthcoming year as early as possible
  • send you our monthly e-bulletin newsletter and regular email news updates
  • provide an informative and accessible website where you can download all our publications free of charge
  • provide a range of training and networking events for staff from your centre throughout the year (see the ‘events’ section of our website for details)
  • provide a step by step guide to our processes from approval to certificate in our Centre Support Guide
  • allocate an External Moderator or Verifier when you register candidates, for each qualification or award you offer, who’ll visit at least once a year to sample your candidates’ portfolios and provide support.


Helping us to help you

We rely on your feedback to let us know whether we’re providing the right kind of products and service. We carry out a number of surveys and focus groups throughout the year, but you don’t have to wait until then to tell us what you think. If you want to give us your thoughts you can email feedback@ncfe.org.uk or just pick up the phone and tell us!
 
We try to get it right first time, every time, but of course sometimes things don’t go quite according to plan. If you’re unhappy about any aspect of the service you’ve received from NCFE you should contact your Centre Support Assistant who’ll usually be able to put right whatever we’ve done wrong. If you’re still unhappy, you can contact one of our Centre Support Team Leaders, or our Centre Support Manager.
 
If you write or email us a complaint, we’ll acknowledge it within one working day of receiving it and give you the contact details of the person dealing with the complaint. Once we’ve fully looked into the problem, we’ll let you know what went wrong and what we’ve done, or are going to do, to resolve it within 20 working days at the very most (but usually much more quickly!).
 
After we’ve sent you a response, we’ll contact you again to make sure that you’re happy with the way we dealt with your complaint.
 
NCFE also has an appeals policy which covers enquiries about results, assessment and approval decisions available from our website.
 
If you have any questions about this please get in touch with Hilary Whitaker, Service Excellence Manager on 0191 239 8035 or email hilarywhitaker@ncfe.org.uk.


[1] Office opening hours are 8.30am to 5pm Monday to Thursday and 8.30am to 4.30pm on Friday (excluding Bank Holidays and the period between Christmas and New Year)

 

*not including postage times