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Customer Service Policy

Red Box Teachers Recruitment Ltd is a Customer Services business. We have an excellent reputation amongst our Schools and Teachers for our continued focus on our customer relationships. We aim to get it right every time in terms of our communications and the quality and fit of our Teachers and TA’s for our individual schools. Where we don’t get it right, we take the feedback very seriously and seek to rectify it straight away.

Feedback from both our clients ‘Primary Schools’ and our ‘Teachers and Teaching Assistants’ we place in roles, plays a major part in how we develop our product, processes and procedures.

Our Education Consultants and Administrators are recruited for their Customer service and relationship building skills and experience.

Home » Policies » Customer Service Policy

Customer Service Policy

Feedback from both our clients ‘Primary Schools’ and our ‘Teachers and Teaching Assistants’ we place in roles, plays a major part in how we develop our product, processes and procedures.

Our Education Consultants and Administrators are recruited for their Customer service and relationship building skills and experience.

Customer Service Plan

Our Culture

At Red Box we are committed to doing whatever creates and maintains a satisfied Customer. We look to establish a partnership approach with our Customers whereby our Clients, our Teachers and ourselves seek to have a positive outcome.

For our Schools this means:

Being proactive, learn about the school, the challenges they face and understand what they are looking for in a Supply agency.
Having 100% effective and efficient vetting and booking placement processes which have Safeguarding as our top priority.
Sourcing quality teachers we know will work well with their specific school culture.
Listen to feedback and respond in a timely and constructive fashion.
Have simple, reliable and efficient back-office administration processes which work.
Show respect for our Customer’s time – therefore we don’t time waste with CV drops or cold calling.
Incentivising our Staff on providing excellent Customer Service and not based on achieving targets for placing teachers as this can drive the wrong behaviour.

For our Teachers and Teaching Assistants this means:

Listening to their short and long term plans and their aspirations in terms of working preferences, which year groups, how many days per week, which areas they can cover:
Make their dealings with us fast, effective and seamless.
We take onboard feedback regarding which schools our Teachers and TAs prefer and those which don’t meet their needs.
We communicate school directions by Text messages
We are responsive, friendly and approachable
We manage the timesheet process on behalf of our teachers
We furnish our Teachers with as much information on our schools as possible

Collecting Feedback – Listening to our Customers

We receive feedback from our Schools with regard to our service on a daily basis. This is usually received via emails and telephone calls. The feedback is generally to let us know:
How our Teachers and Teaching Assistants have performed – what worked and didn’t work, whether or not they would like the teachers to return to their schools.
We capture this feedback on our system – to inform us that Teachers are liked by a school or should not be sent back to a certain school.
Often schools will request specific Teachers or Teaching Assistants as they like them and they are a good fit for their school culture. We will then seek to ensure the member of Teaching or Teaching Assistant staff member is happy to work at that particular school and we will arrange a long term match.
For Long Term placements, we provide free trial days, so Teachers and schools can become acquainted and ensure they are a good fit before committing to a long term arrangement.
We understand that schools seek continuity as much as possible and we aim to assist them with this. Particularly where Teachers or Teaching Assistants have been assigned to work on a 121 basis with a Child with Special Educational Needs, this is critical that we have continuity for the benefit of the child. This is a really sensitive and challenging area and we therefore play our part in working in partnership with the schools to satisfy them and the parents in ensuring each child is given the right opportunity.
We also conduct periodic (every 6 mths) Customer Feedback Surveys to understand how we are performing and what improvements we can make.
The Feedback survey information is collated and the feedback is taken onboard and measures implemented to make improvements.

Data Capture

At Red Box, we recognize that the business to date has been built on its strong reputation for providing a quality product and for having a high focus on integrity and building long term customer relationships. We also acknowledge that we have been quite reactive and respond to the business coming through the door from word of mouth and our reputation.

We do very little active monitoring of the changing behaviour of our Customers, and our marketing is limited. We have therefore put in place plans to make improvements in this area in an attempt to grow the business in terms of the number of schools that use us and to broaden our geographical coverage across London Primary schools.

Below are the actions to move us forward as a business:

Establish Key Account Managers – To track our customers’ changing needs and uncover our long-term performance trends. We will collect data on a continual basis.
Feedback – To make the kind of improvements our customers want, we need to capture specific feedback and ensure it is timely and relevant.
Set Priorities – Given that some data or feedback may jump out at us due to it being more relevant or important, we will concentrate our efforts on information that affects our bottom line.

Key Account Management

We are introducing Key Customer Account Management to ensure that we focus on key accounts trends in usage, behaviour, customer feedback and keep abreast of any concerns we need to be aware of.
As we don’t have firm contracts in place with schools, all schools are able to use other as many Recruitment Agencies to supply Teachers as they require. This means that we have to work extra hard to secure their bookings on an ongoing basis and continuously enhance our service offering.
6 monthly Account Meetings – Schools are extremely busy and do not value spending lots of time with recruitment Agencies trying to sell them business. Instead, they need us to make life easy for them by providing slick and simple processes, quality teachers and teaching assistants and no hassle from a Sales and Marketing perspective. We, therefore, value their wishes and keep visits to a minimum. Our relationships are therefore borne out of telephone communications which can be daily and in listening and responding to their needs.

Our Customer Vision is

“Red Box are the Primary School Supply Agency of choice amongst all London primary schools and teachers”

Customer-friendly Policies: At Red Box we aim to keep our administration processes straight forward and easy to understand for both our Schools and Teachers. We seek to remove the headache from our Clients by sending everything to them electronically and completing as much as we can on their behalf where appropriate.

Terms of Business: We send our terms of business to New Schools once only and respond to bookings immediately with details of Teachers we have assigned.

Permanent Introduction Fees: Where we have a Preferred Agency Status with a school, we do not charge Transfer Fees after a Teacher has worked more than 1 Term. Our Schools appreciate our fair approach on this and it helps to build upon our Customer Relationships.

Example: We send documents by Echo Sign, in advance of interviews with Teachers to reduce time at Interview.

Timesheets: We send schools an email to confirm how many hours were worked by each teacher and therefore confirming how much we need to charge. This reduces the reliance on Teachers completing timesheets.

Dealing Effectively With Our Customers

Communication Skills

Building rapport with Our Schools and Teachers. At Red Box we listen to our customers, we try to empathize with them and their situation and work hard to resolve any problems they raise.

At Red Box, we have a number of Service Targets to drive the correct Customer Service ethos

98% of all phone calls are to be answered within 3 rings.
All calls are answered in a consistent manner – “‘Good Morning/Hello, Red Box Teachers, ‘Katy’ speaking”
We have a target to respond to 100% all initial applicant enquiries or to prospective applicants who have expressed an interest in joining Red Box within one working day.
We consistently conduct telephone interviews up front to ascertain early in the process if the applicant is someone we genuinely would be able to find work for. This acts as a time saver for both the Applicant and for Red Box.
We aim to make our Customers feel special, and our attitude and behaviour aims to re-enforce this with every interaction.

Establishing a Long-Term Relationship

With each School or Teacher we bring on board, it is imperative that we seek out long term working relationships as we invest heavily in the recruitment, vetting and interviewing process stage. We therefore need to continue to work at the relationships and get to know and understand what makes our Customers tick.

We do this by being open and honest in our approach and ensure we handle any feedback and decisions with integrity. This then builds trust and develops into a long term relationship. It is critical that we never take Customers for granted as we have no guaranteed future bookings and are therefore reliant on our reputation with our existing Schools to ensure that they want to continue to use us at Red Box.

Responding to Problems / Complaints

Whilst we aim to get our service right each time, there are times when things do go wrong. We know that there is evidence to suggest that if a problem is resolved quickly, 98 percent of customers will buy again and even tell others of their positive experience.

We therefore aim to deal with each problem as it arises and turn around any dissatisfied Customers straight away. We do this by empowering the Consultant’s in the team to give the School a reduced rate for a Teacher, a free trial day or other small steps to ensure the Customer knows we have taken their complaint seriously and have turned them around.

Communication & Training

A high standard of customer service is critical and we therefore must ensure it is embedded amongst every member of the team. In weekly meetings we share the current outstanding placements which need to be filled as well as discussing any new requirements – e.g. New School, what’s outstanding in terms of positions to be filled, any issues or feedback we have received. The whole team play a part and take responsibility for seeking out new ways to improve our processes and ultimately the service we offer to Customers.

Red Box Teacher Recruitment Limited

Office 33, Terminal House
Station Approach, Shepperton
TW17 8AP