Passport Service wins Team of the Year and Impact in Digital Awards at the CX Impact Awards

The Tánaiste and Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade today welcomed news that the Passport Service won the Impact in Digital and Team of the Year awards at the annual CX Impact Awards last night. The awards recognise achievements in measuring and managing Customer Experience excellence that delivers better outcomes for customers.

The Passport Service’s Customer Service Hub won in the “Team of the Year” category, which recognises a team of people who have demonstrated initiative, team work, creativity and leadership to deliver change and improvement in customer experience. The Passport Service also won the “Impact in Digital” category for the development of its online service.

In addition, the Passport Service was placed 14 overall, against significant competition from large private and public sector organisations, on the CX framework following a survey on CX excellence carried out by CXi (Customer Experience Insights), which measures customer experience across a number of fields including trust, reliability and ease of use. The Passport Service was the only public sector body represented in the Top 100 organisations.

Welcoming the result, the Tánaiste said:

“We are delighted to gain recognition of the success of the improved customer experience which the Passport Service is delivering to Irish citizens in its busiest year so far. We have made significant improvements to our customer service function this year. We focus on resolving customer queries on first contact through a dedicated contact centre and escalation unit. The team handles up to 10,000 queries per week and is passionate about delivering first rate customer service to all citizens. The Passport Service equally strives to use technology to give its customers the best possible service anywhere in the world and has developed a highly successful and multiple-award winning online service.

“Both of these awards are a great achievement as the Passport Service was in competition with many deserving entries. We would like to thank everybody involved in the CX Awards for the recognition.”

ENDS

As part of the Passport Service’s journey of continuous transformation, the Customer Service Hub was launched in January 2019 in order to increase the Passport Service’s capacity to handle the significant volume of queries received on a weekly basis. Almost 100 officers were recruited and reassigned to work in the new unit, which handles up to 10,000 queries per week. A number of innovative initiatives including staff empowerment workshops have fostered a positive team spirit for which the Passport Service is delighted to be recognised through the winning of these awards.

The Passport Service introduced online renewal of adult passports in 2017 and expanded this service in 2018 to include the renewal of child passports. On October 31 this year, Passport Online expanded to allow first time applicants from Ireland, Northern Ireland, Great Britain, the European Union, European Economic Area and Switzerland to apply through this channel.