Pocket Receptionist, a Lowestoft-based call-answering service, has won the Customer Excellence Award, sponsored by Greater Anglia, at this year’s Suffolk Business Awards.

Founded five years ago as a by-product of SwitchboardFREE VoIP services, Pocket Receptionist has grown exponentially and in 2021, it surpassed its 1,000,000th call milestone.

It has also established an HR and customer service team this year to ensure staff wellbeing is considered and the service delivered continues to be the best it can be.

The judges were impressed with Pocket Receptionist’s commitment to ensuring maximum customer satisfaction. They said that the product itself had been born out of feedback from clients and the company continues to listen to its customers in order to mould the business.

After meeting with a number of department heads across a broad range of areas, the judges felt that Pocket Receptionist displayed a clear commitment to ensuring market leading customer care.

Natalie Engstrom, operations manager at Pocket Receptionist, said: “We are completely blown away to have won this award. We can’t wait to take this back to the team.

“This is completely overwhelming and as newcomers, to win this award really is incredible.

“We can’t put into words what this will do for our staff, it will certainly boost morale and they will be very excited!”


About the sponsor

Greater Anglia is passionate about delivering excellent customer service and ensuring that the railways play their full part in helping our region to be both economically prosperous and a wonderful place to live. It is therefore committed to consistently raising customer service standards.

A complete fleet of brand-new trains is now operating on all of the company’s Suffolk routes, transforming the travelling environment on all routes, providing more comfortable journeys, increasing seating capacity and improving reliability, as part of a £1.4 billion investment programme.


The finalists

MAD-HR
MAD-HR is an award-winning HR consultancy delivering support and training to businesses of all sectors and sizes across the east of England. The judges felt that the business went above and beyond during the pandemic, adopting a clever content strategy to add value for its network and introducing initiatives to support clients’ needs.

The Hearing Care Centre

The Hearing Care Centre is a multi-award winning, independent provider of specialist hearing care and earwax removal services. During the pandemic, it adopted a ‘contactless care approach’ to continue supporting clients, alongside a number of other initiatives. The judges said that its ability to listen to customers and shape its business through feedback was tremendous.

Vertas Group

Facilities management company Vertas delivers services in a range of areas, including cleaning, catering, security, education management, grounds and landscapes, reception and concierge, passenger transport, courier and postal and property management.

The judges were impressed with the business’ customer care schemes including awards, a new panel, monthly updates and a full-day training module.