Chairman Message

Customer Relationship Excellence Leadership is an Inspirational Journey!

Welcome to the 20th annual International Customer Relationship Excellence Awards (CRE Awards).

The Customer Relationship Excellent (CRE) Awards has recognized many industry leaders and professionals for their customer centric service innovation. The participants have come from more international cities and business sectors in both corporate and individual categories, all demonstrating their business successes, best practices and leadership on CRE.

In 2022, APCSC enters her 25th year in promoting customer relationship excellence in the Asia Pacific region, APCSC is very proud to witness how CRE Awards winners continue to bring new service levels, innovations, quality standards and benchmarks to shape the future directions of business practices in making Asia Pacific a better place to live and do business!

The Customer Service Quality Standard (CSQS) is the CRE Awards Standard. The participants have learned greatly from the best practices and world class standards to better prepare for the CRE Awards assessment and benchmarking process. The CSQS is instrumental in improving customer oriented corporate governance and balanced scorecards managing stakeholders of the organizations and further recognizing the CRE Awards winners. It is highly required that all CRE Awards participating companies attend the Certificate in Customer Service Management (CCSM) global certification program and implement the CSQS to meet and exceed the CRE Awards assessment process benchmarking.

Through the prestigious CRE Awards, Asia Pacific business leaders are able to share experiences and learn from one another amongst the World-Class CRE Leaders and achieve the goal of market leadership and gain international CRE branding and recognitions as the Asia Pacific service icon.

On behalf of APCSC and CRE Awards judging panel and organizing committee, I wish you business success and Customer Relationship Excellence!

 

 

Jason Chu
Chairman of Asia Pacific Customer Service Consortium

Benefits



Succeed in implementing the world class CSQS to achieve international service class standing



Integrate with the most widely-used ISO international quality standard and the balanced scorecard (BSC) performance management system, to reduce reinvestment costs from establishing and applying different standards and systems and further enhance customer loyalty and satisfaction.



Establish the most comprehensive customer-centric world class framework through the most comprehensive Accreditation Scheme.



Enhance overall effectiveness, streamline processes, and deliver ever improving services with reduced cost.



Improve business performance effectively, enhance the partnership between customers and firms, and develop continuous value adding as the corporate culture through customer-centric transformation strategy.



Engage the management and frontline staff to support the vision and mission of Customer Relationship Excellence as the core value of the organization.



Improve Best Practices, Capability and Efficiency of organizational performance to increase Return on Investment and Brand Value.



Increase corporate profitability, contributing to the marketplace success and better return for shareholders.

Overview
Introduction & Overview of the CSQS

The Customer Service Quality Standard (CSQS) has been developed in conjunction with the Asia Pacific Customer Service Consortium and research members from the University of Hong Kong, lead by Professor George Huang to assess the overall service quality, best practice compliance and performance of the customer service operation as well as the entire service organization. It is the most comprehensive certification dedicated to a robust customer centric world class service framework awarded to organizations that excel in customer relationship excellence.

The main aim of the CSQS is to establish a practitioner-based, user-driven set of best-practice guidelines that can be followed to improve and manage the service operation systematically and effectively so as to provide consistently excellent services to meet and exceed customer requirements and expectations.

Excellence Model

“Many companies are struggling to achieve service excellence branding. Despite the goodwill of many organizations in search for innovative and effective ways to enhance customer interactions, existing quality standards do not fully answer the total needs of customers,” said Jason Chu, Chairman of APCSC. “That explains why APCSC has jointly developed the Customer Service Quality Standard (CSQS) with the University of Hong Kong to provide a roadmap for organizations to bridge the expectation gap.”

Integration of balanced scorecard & ISO9000

CSQS holds the most advanced and comprehensive key to providing a clear step-by-step roadmap for companies to deliver the best customer services. It embraces and integrates the balanced scorecard (BSC) management system and the ISO9000 quality management to provide a world-class framework with crystal clear directions for transforming an organization into a customer-centric unit.

A further goal of the CSQS guidelines is to enhance a common understanding of the customer centric service best practices for organizations and departments in serving both internal and external customers to improve their business performance, to align the approach throughout the company, and to improve interdepartmental and company wide integration.

The yardsticks for the CRE Awards

CSQS is so crucial to customer service that it became the yardsticks for the CRE Awards. “CSQS is important to CRE Awards judging criteria as a fundamental reference that characterizes world class organizations. Furthermore, the CSQS has incorporated the advancements that are strategic and business practical from the CRE Awards winners’ business case presentations annually to create a progressive service movement,” said Chu.

CSKM empowers the frontline

The assessment of CSQS is progressively divided into three levels: intention, implementation and integration. CSQS not only measure if a company has achieved certain levels, but also benchmarking with the industry, and more importantly, how well they have adopted the Customer Service Knowledge Management (CSKM) to empower the frontline staff to deliver the best customer experience.

3 levels of CSQS Excellence

According to Chu, it is a three-dimensional accreditation scoring system that takes into account every aspect from both independent and interrelated perspectives: Level I Operation Service Center; Level II Proactive Service Center; Level III Strategic Business Unit.

This year, China Pacific Life Insurance Co., Ltd. and Henderson Land Group Property Management Department have attained the highest accreditation of CSQS, Level III Strategic Business Unit. In the future, CSQS will continue to evolve to be an even more robust roadmap for companies to learn, incorporate and implement a quality managing system that fulfills and exceeds customer expectations.

Objective



To drive Customer Relationship Excellence as core business value throughout the organization with endorsement from the top management to frontline operations



To improve organizational performance, best practices, capabilities, and results with Quality Management tools for continuing development of people, process and system



To audit and evaluate your service organization and systems with a World Class Framework for Strategic planning, Implementation, and Organization Integration



To serve as a working tool for understanding and managing performance and for guiding planning and opportunities for learning



To establish a common understanding of the customer service best practices



To drive Enterprise Knowledge Management of Customer Services meeting the CSQS framework and market competition



To serve as a recognition of a company’s outstanding performance and achieving customer relationship excellence through the use of best practices

Implementation
How to apply the CSQS?

The CSQS applies primarily to the Customer Service business process and the interaction / impact on other business processes. Examples include Customer Service Contacts, Product and Services, Knowledge Management, Technical Support, Help Desk, Distribution Fulfilment, Operator Services, Order processing, etc.

The CSQS is intended to be generic, and independent of any specific industry or economic sector. It is applicable to the Customer Service function in all types and sizes of organisation. For example, CSQS can be applied to Customer Service Centers in the banking sector, telecommunications, and manufactured products, etc. Application of the standard can be conducted in stages or as an improvement process driven project.

The CSQS is presented in a modular form so that it can be easily tailored or extended to suit individual organizations, taking into account the size, complexity and nature of the business.

CSQS Committee
Asia Pacific CSQS Committee

The CSQS is supported by the Standards Consortium that comprises of leading companies throughout the region.

Members

The Standard and the Committee will bring to the Service Industry much benefits and long term contribution; and the Standard will accelerate the maturity and professional development in particular the organizational effectiveness and integration of customer service, contact center and quality of outsourcing service sector.

Several industry leaders including:-

Industry quality experts include:

  • Prof. George Huang, Professor of HKU, joint-project leader for the CSQS
  • Professor Sam Ho, Founder Chair of International Conference on ISO9000 and TQM (ICIT)
  • Dr. Ching-Chow Yang , Associate Professor, Chung-Yuan Christian University
  • Dr. Prasert Suttiprasit , Sukhothai Thammathirat Open University & Thai Award Examiner
  • Professor Wu Nengquan, The Professor and Manager Association of Sun Yatsen University
  • Mr. Victor Mok, CEO, North Asia, DHL Supply Chain

Since the introduction of the CSQS in Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and China, we are seeing a growing interest in the CSQS as more companies recognize the importance of elevating and raising the quality of service that is provided to customers. Geographical location is unimportant these days – what matters are that we meet and exceed the expectations of our customers and raise the overall quality of the service we are providing. This is a common objective shared by all committee members.

Benefits and Obligations of the CSQS Committee:-
  • To join CSQS Committee Membership with the APCSC network and learn findings
  • To have access to the latest version on the Standard and to input, review, feedback on the Standard
  • To make use and adopt CSQS into customer service operation quality management system
  • To receive committee member discount on CSQS training and audit