Recognition of Quality – Gloucestershire College Student Services

The Student Services team at Gloucestershire College is delighted to be the first department of its kind in the South West to be awarded ISO9001 accreditation. ISO9001 is an internationally recognised quality standard that states an organisation or department has a robust and fit for purpose quality management system.

The Student Services team provide a wide range of services including the provision of information, advice and guidance, admissions support and financial assistance to both current and prospective college students.

For the past 12 months, the Student Services team have been working towards the accreditation in a bid to ensure there are well-defined and documented processes that improve consistency of output and ultimately lead to greater internal operational efficiency – and therefore an improved level of customer service.

Claire Dores, Student Services Manager said, “The entire process has been invaluable. It has ensured that we look hard at enhancing the customer’s experience. We have focused on continual improvement initiatives that have meant we aim to not only meet, but ultimately exceed our customer’s expectations. ISO9001 has also ensured there is a better and controlled documentation of processes, which have lead to increased consistency in performance.”

The benefits of the accreditation have helped develop greater teamwork and staff involvement in driving customer focused improvements.

Student Services Advisor, Rita Baker said, “The structured framework of procedures we have developed in order to achieve the ISO9001 quality award has given us the foundation and confidence to provide excellent customer service. Customers now know what to expect from us and if something does go wrong we all have the benefit of knowing what support processes we have to follow to put things right.”

Claire concludes, “We are frequently looking at ways in which we can better understand customer needs. Customer feedback is important but being able to act quickly to customer requirements is critical to our future success. Our customers have choices over where they study so it is imperative we listen to their needs.”