BSH, the parent company of Neff, Bosch, Siemens, and Gaggenau, has won a leading customer service award for the second year running.

The Total Excellence and Quality (TEQ) award is given out by warranty provider Domestic & General who survey 420,000 customers who had an engineer's visit in the last 12 months.

BSH customer service was rated as excellent or good by 95.2% of respondents in the white goods manufacturers' category. This meant the company took first place, beating its own 2009 score of 94.5%.

Specific developments since winning the TEQ award last year include reinforced training for contact centre staff, shorter lead times for engineer visits, more parts deliveries and a new internal mentoring scheme.

In addition, online customer service has been expanded to include a 24-hour booking service for engineer visits.

BSH contact centre operations manager, Colin Embling, said: "Getting customer service right first time is good for the customer and good for our business. The past year has seen significant investment in contact centre training programmes and this has produced more knowledgeable advisors who are now even better equipped to help the customer over the phone and avoid unnecessary engineer visits."

BSH Customer Service is the manufacturers' service organisation for the four appliance brands in the UK. It has over 260 directly employed engineers based locally around the country.

"At BSH Customer Service, we have a culture of continuous improvement," said customer service director Bernhard Vocke (pictured with the award). "This is good news for our customers, but it is also very reassuring for all of our dealers. When they sell a Bosch, Siemens, Gaggenau or Neff appliance, they can be confident that their customer will receive the best customer service in the industry."