Following a landmark year for the Hong Kong Association for Customer Service Excellence (HKACE) in 2006, I am delighted to start my 2007 report by quoting the tagline for our anniversary “Excellent Team  Infinite Power”.

Established in Year 2000, the Association has gained continuous support and recognition in the community. I am excited to announce that in addition to the thirteen founding members from leading service organisations, we have sixteen quality companies that share the same vision in fostering service excellence with us over the past twelve months. Our membership base has doubled since the incorporation in May 2006withmore than 180,000 customer service practitioners representing 6% of people working in the service sector in Hong Kong, joining hands in striving for customer service excellence. We are committed to continue our work in organising the annual Customer Service Excellence Awards, regular large-scale seminars, forums, training sessions, and company visits to facilitate experience-sharing and exchange best service practices as well as publishing a service guide book for circulation among the wider public. The good work is done to nurture a service excellence culture and to enhance Hong Kong’s professional status.

The theme for 2007 was “Build a Winning Team”. We shifted our focus from the emphasis of individual attributes to “team”. We believe that providing outstanding and quality customer service is crucial for a company to stay ahead in today's competitive business environment. In order to achieve this prerequisite a company must have a strong back up team supporting the management that shares the same goal of striving for quality customer service.

All the activities organised focused on the theme, such as the “Quality Customer Service Programme for SMEs” (QCSP), and the newly launched series “CEO Forum”.

This was the fifth year we collaborated with The Government of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Commerce and Economic Development Bureau in organising the QCSP. We had an overwhelming response, with almost 2,000 participants inspired by our renowned speakers that shared their success formulas and crucial elements in building winning teams. A guidebook has been published that includes highlights of the seminars and key learning points from the speakers.

A clear and well-communicated company vision and mission and operational excellence are some of the crucial elements in team success. We launched a new series “CEO Forum” and invited CEOs from our leading service companies to share their unique, valuable experience on how to achieve “Customer Service Excellence”. Through the sharing, it helped further elevate the competitive edge of more than 700 member companies and their staff, as well as others who aspired to the same excellent standards in the service industry, and the university students.

We are extremely pleased to have the continued support of The Government of The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Trade and Industry Department in providing funding for our Customer Service Award Program for SMEs. This valuable resource allowed the Association to pursue our mission in promoting service excellence to the small and medium sized enterprises, which accounts for more than 98% companies in Hong Kong’s economy. The briefing sessions and training seminars under this program were well received by almost 400 participants, and we received 96 submissions in the category of Individual and Organisation Awards. Regarding our Member Awards, we launched a highly coveted Grand Award in addition to the Team and Individual categories. The Grand Award is to recognize and reward the organisation-wide achievement on customer service excellence. I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate all our winners. The awards they received are well deserved and re-affirm our efforts towards building a culture of continuous improvement.

HKACE had been conducting periodical studies to provide the service industries with analyses and insights on customer service topics. The research books, along with other service guidebooks, are available free of charge and can be downloaded from the HKACE website. We wish to deploy resources on research in a more systematic and focused manner, as well as develop a service excellence index which will help companies achieve service excellence both domestically and globally.

Moving into our 8th year – the Association will continue its effort to expand its membership base and we aim to collaborate further with more government bodies and agencies to continue our journey to expand “Excellent Team” with “Infinite Power”.

Finally, I would like to thank all member organisations, training partners, supporting organisations, and the Executive Committee for their unfailing support and contribution, without which our recent achievements would not have been possible.

Thank you.

Chairman
Hong Kong Association for Customer Service Excellence
January 2008