Excellence for Our Customers - Name Badges

This is a copy of an email sent by our most senior manager to all staff of the organisation I work for this week. I have highlighted the bit I enjoyed most. I like to think of all these highly paid people sitting in meetings discussing at length what should go on name badges. Personally,I am sure I would never have managed to come up with the solution they did, and that is clearly why they are paid a six figure salary and I am not.

Excellence for Our Customers - Name Badges.


In ‘Our Plan for Putting the Customer First’ we have two specific standards around being identifiable to our customers. We agreed that we will ‘wear staff badges and show proof of our identity when appropriate’. We also agreed that we will ‘answer calls within five rings clearly stating our name and where we work’.



One of our services has recently been assessed against the Charter Mark Standard for Customer Service Excellence. During the assessment it became apparent that the requirement is for staff to be ‘uniquely identifiable’ rather than just identifiable as staff, so a badge that simply says ‘staff’ is not helpful. We have to be identifiable so that we can be accountable for the good things as much as anything else.



For some years we have had a variety of staff badges and having received the Charter Mark assessment it is now timely to review this practice.



The choice for staff name badges is now:

· first name only, i.e. ‘Ingrid’

· first name and surname, i.e. ‘Ingrid Mercer’

This preference has been agreed because it is the practice adopted by most public facing organisations and quite informal. We understand that people who deal with customers on a regular face to face basis may be concerned at sharing their full name and that is why the option to have first name only is available.



This is a further positive development in improving our customer service and putting the needs of the customer first. I therefore ask you to arrange for new badges to be provided for members of staff who require them.



I thank you once again for your support in improving customer service.