Caroline Tan
BSc (Hons) Financial Services
A.C.I.B (Associate of the Chartered Institute of Bankers)
A.M.I.C.S (Assessor Member of the Institute of Customer Service)
Caroline owns and runs the Worcestershire based company: Inspiring People; a specialist company involved in helping organisations across the world improve the customer service that they offer.
Caroline is a respected expert on customer service in the UK with impressive results to confirm it. She has acquired this knowledge during a career spanning 20 years in customer service, in roles ranging from front line to strategist. This expertise has been further refined by meticulous research, study and travel both in the UK and America where Caroline has seen for herself how market leaders in customer service achieve their sensational results.
After a long career within the Nationwide Building Society group in the UK including 8 years within Retail Management leading customer service forward at the front end, Caroline specialised in the “science of service” and after a stint as Customer Service Consultant across the retail network looking after 60 branches moved to a subsidiary (UCB Home Loans) in charge of customer service. Here she reported directly to the Managing Director and was responsible for designing and implementing a 3-year strategy.
Some of her main achievements: -
- Company moved from good to excellent to strong contender for provider of World Class Customer Service within 2 years (CBI Service Probe – June 99)
- New Business increased by 400% in 3 years as a result of process changes and reputation. Market share moved from 10% est. to 23% est.
- Strategy aided company to move from 2 to 5* (3 years running) award in Financial Advisor awards for service.
- Built and maintained customer satisfaction index (66% satisfaction 1997/86% satisfaction 2001).
Inspiring People have worked with organisations in both the public and private sectors, helping them to look at the service that they offer to their customers with a fresh pair of eyes including British Telecom and a whole raft of local authorities. Caroline now spends some of her time in Africa helping to move customer culture forward within the Telecoms industry in an emerging economy.
Caroline works very closely with the Institute of Customer Service (ICS) in the UK, supporting them in rolling out their professional awards and has acted in an advisory capacity on various panels. She was heavily involved in the pilot of their Professional awards, ICS FirstImpressions and ICS ServiceManagement and has helped to shape the NVQ awards in Customer Service at various levels.
Caroline also coaches and assesses for the Institute and writes articles for their magazine Customer First as well as having been an assessor for the National Customer Service awards for the last 8 years a role which in turn inspires Caroline!