Quality Review
Overview
The Partners and staff at BBS are committed to providing the highest possible quality advice and services to their clients at all times. This commitment applies to every client and every piece of work carried out each and every day. As part of our relationships we expect that our clients will, and indeed we want them to, provide feedback on how we are performing. We all like to receive praise but it is also important that we hear about what we could do better.
To make sure we capture the widest possible feedback we issue, in the 4th quarter of every other year, a Quality Survey questionnaire to all of our clients. We are pleased to be able to bring you the results of our latest Quality Survey, together with information on how we intend to build on the feedback.
101 returns were received from 243 questionnaires issued – a response rate of almost 42%.
The questionnaires asked the reader to indicate, on a scale of 1-5, how strongly they agreed or disagreed with a series of statements regarding various aspects of our business. The higher the score, the better the view of our performance. We are delighted to report that, as in previous years, we continue to be rated, on average, between 4 and 5 on each category. However to get a fuller picture a more detailed analysis is provided below.
BBS Partners & Staff
38% of respondents gave maximum marks reflecting a high regard for Partners and staff. The average score in each category is shown together with some of the comments received.
“honest, friendly support and advice”
“a highly professional team”
“a pleasure to deal with”
The results are in line with those in previous surveys:
However, we continue to seek out and recruit knowledgeable, approachable and proactive staff. Over the last 12 months we have recruited 5 new staff, with our team now standing at 4 Partners and 43 staff. We continue to support the ongoing professional development of our staff and we now have 7 actuaries, 7 APMI qualified consultants and many more working towards professional qualifications.
To keep our clients informed of the major pension developments, we publish “BBS briefing notes”. In addition, every month we issue a summary of what is happening in the pensions world in our “Trustees Agenda”. If you are not currently receiving these but would like to, please let us know. Both of these documents are, of course, generic and your BBS team will deliver the specific and relevant advice you need.
BBS Advice
The quality and appropriateness of our advice and the delivery of that advice on time, is of paramount importance to the success of our business.
The average scores together with some more of the comments received are:
“an excellent service – I would not hesitate to recommend BBS to others”
“totally satisfied with all your work”
“an outstanding blue chip organisation”
We are pleased that once again the average score in each section is above 4:
However in the current turbulent times we are very sensitive to the challenges that our clients face and in particular the need for our services to represent excellent “value for money”.
Value for money often means different things to different people, and it is not, of course, simply the price charged. Whilst we are pleased that over 75% of our clients gave us a rating of 4 or 5 when asked whether our advice represented good value for money, we are very conscious that this is an area we have to strive continually to demonstrate the value of our services. Budgets and timetables agreed in advance with our clients assist in this process and in meeting our fundamental objective of "avoiding surprises".
Administration Service
Administration is, as far as the members of the pension schemes are concerned, the public face of BBS. It is critical that when members receive an annual benefit statement, a benefit quotation or a pension payment, it is clear, correct and timely. We have invested heavily in developing our administration systems and processes and we are delighted with the findings of the survey as shown below:
Although we are pleased, we are not complacent and we continue to look to develop our service. During 2009 we have reviewed our member communications to make them more user friendly and are now taking direct member feedback on our service. We will continue to set, monitor and report on our five day turnaround targets, which we know are market leading.
Finally, we hope you will agree that the Survey shows that BBS continues to provide a very high quality service, but we continue to welcome any feedback that you may have, at any time.
