Telephone standards

On this page:

General telephone advice
Specialist telephone advice

Important note:

We are currently focussing our audit resource on our contracted suppliers and those whose funding is contingent on the award of the Quality Mark.

Therefore if your organisation does not fall into these categories, it is unlikely your application will be accepted or your organisation audited. We recommend you contact your LSC regional office to check the local position.

We apologise for any inconvenience caused and if you would like to comment further, please write to the Quality Efficiencies and Diversity Department at the Head Office address.

General telephone advice

The Quality Mark guidance for telephone services should be read in conjunction with the Quality Mark standard and workbooks (available from the General Help page).

The guidance was developed by a working group consisting of a spectrum of organisations from the voluntary and public sectors that are specialists in the provision of telephone services.

The additional requirements and guidance have been developed to provide an equivalent level of quality assurance for telephone services to that which exist for face-to-face services.

In order to be certified as a Quality Marked telephone service please complete the application form and self-assessment checklist and send to your LSC Regional Office.

Please note that the application form contains a self-assessment checklist and this can be added to the Quality Mark workbooks at the information and general levels.

Specialist telephone advice

Organisations that offer dedicated specialist advice over the telephone (i.e. have a telephone advice line that is open at the same time each week) and would like this service quality marked at the specialist level will need to comply with the additional requirements for telephone services (see the Documents panel on the right hand side of this page).

Last updated: 10 November 2003