A new report from the Contact Centre Management Association has found that the customer support centre at NHS Shared Business Services (NHS SBS) answers calls in just 80 seconds, compared with 139 seconds in other organisations.

At the same time, 95 per cent of issues are resolved after just one enquiry, compared with 76 per cent in others.

The report also revealed that NHS SBS’s agents receive almost double the average amount of training and the centre has one of the country’s lowest attrition rates - 7 per cent, compared to an average of 28 per cent.

John Murphy, head of customer excellence at NHS SBS explained: “The finance and accounting service here at NHS SBS is at the heart of the NHS. When you visit a hospital, there’s a good chance that everything you see has been paid for via our systems and services.

“Our customer support agents are on the front line, making that happen. They deal with around half a million enquiries every year, which can be anything from simply following up an invoice to resolving issues in the supply chain to make sure goods get to where they need to be.

“The benchmarking report compared us with many household names, and the fact we’ve been rated so highly is fantastic news. It’s particularly gratifying to see that our investment in training and providing a great working environment has resulted in huge benefits for our customers, including short waiting times and more than nine out of ten issues being resolved after just one enquiry.”

The report also highlighted some areas for improvement, including the length of the Interactive Voice Response (IVR) automated system navigated by callers.

Murphy added: "This is being changed in the next few weeks.

“We’re also taking on board requests from callers to change our hold music – although our goal is that they should never get to the music.

“Our mantra is that if our people are happy, our clients will be too. This report is an endorsement of our approach. But we’re not resting on our laurels – we believe we can always improve, and we’re going to keep on doing just that.”