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We met the QASSS Ltd team earlier in the year at the UK Complaint Handling Awards 2020. Their enthusiasm, will to thrive and learn at the same time left an impact on us as well as the Judges, as they took home two awards.

It’s no surprise to hear that QASS have been leading the way in supporting businesses in this time, providing them with all the necessary information regarding the current situation. Having started this year with two awards, they are now using their platform to help others and improve themselves as well. This whole process has made them stronger, proving that we need to stay connected and united in order to prevail.

QASSS Ltd specializes in alternative dispute resolution, working with companies where complaints have hit ‘deadlock’ and are then passed to QASSS to resolve and avoid the need for referral to an Ombudsman or court proceedings. QASSS specializes in the home improvement sector, with a heritage in consumer protection, being responsible for the following consumer protection schemes: Double Glazing and Conservatory Ombudsman Scheme (DGCOS), the HIES Consumer Code and the Home Improvement Consumer Protection Scheme (HICS). The company employs 28 people and is approved by the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI).

Ciarán Harking, managing director of the QASSS ltd spoke about their experience at the awards, how to help businesses at this uncertain time and their plans for the future.

‘Given it was our first UK Complaint Handling Awards experience, we found the whole experience to be brilliant. For us as a small company to be recognized alongside household names was not only a massive boost to everyone in the team, but it was also evidence that what we were doing was positive and making a difference for consumers and businesses alike.’

The UK Complaint Handling Awards was their first awards ceremony and it had a huge impact on the team.

‘They were very excited, and although it was our first awards ceremony, the competitive side kicked in and everyone wants to come back and win gold! So everyone was really happy, but most definitely have a hunger for more success.’

Our events are all about networking. We organise networking sessions to help our attendees meet fellow professionals and hopefully find new business opportunities.

‘Clearly, we have befriended the man behind the heroes and villains series in Don Hales. We have connected with a number of our judges, and as a result of the awards have started to follow a number of companies in attendance, such as Capita Remediation Services.’

The crisis that hit all of us a few months ago has had an enormous impact on business. The QASSS team is doing their best to meet their customer needs.

‘We felt it was important that we continued to operate as normally as we could, so that both businesses and consumers had an information point. Keeping them updated on how the pandemic was affecting the industry and what their options were. We have been providing specific information around government initiatives, cyber security and more recently, what companies should be thinking about in a post-lockdown world. We have also offered a free service to consumers where we will find them alternative home improvement companies to complete any work in their home, where their original trader has temporarily closed, leaving them in a position where their home is either unsafe or insecure. We recently invested in video capture technology which allows us to virtually inspect issues that consumers may have, and feed this information to companies such as insurers, finance lenders or contractors, who can then plan work accordingly based on the level of vulnerability within someone’s home.’

Maintaining a business is challenging at this time and people should have something to look forward to, now more than ever. Not losing a positive mindset is crucial but sometimes hard.

‘Every threat presents an opportunity and there is so much for businesses to learn from these challenging times. For our colleagues, it’s about looking forward to a much more digital, data driven, post lockdown world, where we can take on more business and produce even better results. The key to getting there is maintaining our consistent approach in being a trusted business support partner. Although it’s difficult now, we know there is an exciting future for us. For businesses we work with, the main focus now is cashflow. By now they will have stripped out a lot of cost, that upon reflection they really didn’t need in the first place. As a result, when they get through this difficult period, they are likely to have a lower cost base than what they did before. They will likely be much more digital and have a better focus on their people processes. They have had an opportunity to complete a lot of those housekeeping tasks they keep putting off, and finally, they almost have a chance to start again. They can reflect on life before the lockdown and what wasn’t working. They can then reflect on what successful measures they had to bring in during the lockdown, and bring those forwards.’

And, of course, we wanted to know their plans and what we can expect from QASSS Ltd in future.

‘Well if you remember at the awards we talked about our ADR Superheroes challenging industry dispute resolution times, and hitting new records for the industry. We believe we can go even faster, and we believe we can do so by introducing the latest cutting edge, digital technology.  So our clients will be seeing a lot more automation, media and of course data! All of this, in turn, should create even better customer experiences for those using our services.’

The next episode of the Winsight Webinar series is with QASSS Ltd – you can register here.

If you have a story to tell – CONTACT US! We would be more than happy to hear what you have to say and to share it with the rest of the Awards International world.