NHS Direct delivers an outstanding customer experience

NHS Direct has taken part in a call centre benchmarking exercise to find out what its patients and the public think of the service and to understand ways of improving the experience for future patients.

NHS Direct has been named in a survey following an exercise that involved 300 mystery shoppers using NHS Direct and reporting back on the service they received.

Performance was rated according to customer service criteria including timeliness, ease of use, reliability, staff knowledge and personalisation. The calls reflected different enquiry types from simple requests to more complex enquiries, over several days and at different times. The results from the mystery shopping exercise are now being analysed and the top performers will be announced next month.

NHS Direct has been operating for ten years, providing health advice and information over the phone and via the internet, and is available 365 days a year, 24 hours a day.

NHS Direct handles over 14,000 calls a day (5 million calls a year) and has over 9,500 visits a day to its website self-assessment tools. A recent user satisfaction survey¹ found that 96% of callers were satisfied with the way NHS Direct handled the whole process and would use the service again.

Nick Chapman, NHS Direct Chief Executive, commented:
“We are always keen to know what our patients think of the service we provide, and finding ways of improving the service we give. This independent survey is a very useful addition and a fantastic opportunity to benchmark where we are in relation to other providers.”