IT was all smiles at a Winchester-based dental payment plan specialist after achieving a hat-trick of national accolades.

Denplan was recognised at the Top 50 Companies for Customer Service Awards as second in the UK for email service, third for call service and first for Best Service Provider.

The awards recognise companies who strive to deliver exceptional customer service, and the evening was hosted by Countdown presenter Rachel Riley, and comedian Josh Widdicombe.

It is run by the International Customer Management Institute, and candidates faced months of intense judging led by mystery shoppers.

Companies are assessed from May to August each year, and are rated on key customer service criteria, including how timely calls and emails are dealt with, how easy the process was for the customer, the reliability of information provided, the knowledge of the customer service team, and how personalised the whole experience was for the customer.

Head of customer service Neil Warren said: “We’re very proud to rank as one of the UK’s top performing companies for customer service once again. The teams have worked so hard to improve their performance year on year and we have increased to a score of 96.6 per cent for the quality of our telephone calls from 95.85 per cent last year.

“The whole team is passionate about providing our customers with the best possible service and I’m delighted that their efforts have been recognised.”

Ben Johnston, correspondence team manager, added: “As part of Denplan’s focus to continually find ways to improve our customers’ experience, we restructured the department last year to form a team that specialises in email correspondence.

"This has had a direct effect on how quickly we can deal with enquiries and meant that we could increase our levels of personalisation so that every customer’s experience is unique.”