Agents enjoy benefits of SPS account management approach
Agricultural agents are benefiting from a new account management approach that has given them a single point of contact for all their Single Payment Scheme (SPS) cases.
Following a successful pilot, the Rural Payments Agency has introduced this new way of working to improve the service it offers agents in England.
The Agency has set up a dedicated team to work with agents and each agent’s individual client applications are now being managed by a single case worker or team. This team of Agent Relationship Managers provides a one-stop-shop service handling all queries for each agent’s client base.
This account management approach means that an agent can now cover all, or any, of their cases in one phone call.
Chris Windle, from Chartered Surveyors Windle Beech Winthrop in Skipton, took part in the pilot and says that it has made a real difference to his work with the Agency.
He said: “I believe that it has brought about a big improvement and it has been really beneficial for us.
“Before we became part of the pilot our cases could have been dealt with by different case workers. Now we only need to make one call to discuss our cases and because we speak to the same RPA people all the time we have built good working relationships.
“We know that they have detailed knowledge of our cases and can explain to us any issues or further things we need to do. It has definitely saved us time and it has made it much easier for us to give our clients the service they need.
“Having been part of the pilot I am really pleased to see the approach being rolled out across the country. I hope that everyone else has the same experience that we have had.”
The pilot began in April last year and RPA’s customer satisfaction surveys showed that agents involved in it were more satisfied with the service they were receiving than those outside the pilot, with their scores increasing from 6.8 to 7.7 out of ten.
Now, all of RPA’s estimated 1,000 agents will benefit and each of these submits claims for more than five farmers.
Customer Director Justin Chamberlain said: “By implementing this new way of working nationwide we can make a real difference to all of our agents and the many farmers they represent.
“The pilot was a great success and is undoubtedly a much more efficient way of working. We are now able to make more progress on a single phone call, reducing the overall time it would take to carry out that work in the past and therefore also saving our agents valuable time.”
