Customer Service Excellence accreditation: putting students first

Why Customer Service Excellence?

Customer Service Excellence (CSE) is a national standard assessed across 57 elements that was introduced by the UK Government to ensure organisations put the customer at the heart of everything they do. This aligns with the University of Bradford's "Students First" strategy and the University's values of Excellence, Inclusivity, Innovation and Trust. CSE is an independent, rigorous validation of achievement, and a driver of continuous improvement in university library services, also supporting skills development for the library team.

Our CSE accreditation

The University Library first achieved CSE accreditation in December 2021 and have successfully retained this through subsequent annual reviews.

In January 2026, the Library successfully retained its accreditation and was confirmed as fully compliant across all 57 elements of the CSE standard. In addition we achieved a total of 17 Compliance+ awards. These recognise areas of service or aspects of organisational culture that exceed the standard, where staff consistently 'go above and beyond' for customers (researchers, staff and students). Read more about the CSE accreditation. Areas of successful Compliance+ were:

• 1.1.2 "We have developed customer insight about our customer groups to better understand their needs and preferences."
• 1.1.3 "We make particular efforts to identify hard to reach and disadvantaged groups and individuals and have developed our services in response to their specific needs."
• 1.2.1 "We have a strategy for engaging and involving customers using a range of methods appropriate to the needs of identified customer groups."
• 1.2.3 "We regularly review our strategies and opportunities for consulting and engaging with customers to ensure that the methods used are effective and provide reliable and representative results."
• 1.3.5 "We have made positive changes to services as a result of analysing customer experience, including improved customer journeys."
• 2.1.1 "There is corporate commitment to putting the customer at the heart of service delivery and leaders in our organisation actively support this and advocate for customers."
• 2.1.6 "We empower and encourage all employees to actively promote and participate in the customer-focused culture of our organisation."
• 2.2.2 "Our staff are polite and friendly to customers and have an understanding of customer needs."
• 2.2.4 "We can demonstrate how customer-facing staffs' insight and experience is incorporated into internal processes, policy development and service planning."
• 2.2.5 "We value the contribution our staff make to delivering customer-focused services, and leaders, managers and staff demonstrate these behaviours."
• 3.2.1 "We provide our customers with the information they need in ways that meet their needs and preferences, using a variety of appropriate channels."
• 3.2.3 "We have improved the range, content and quality of verbal, published and web-based information we provide to ensure it is relevant and meets the needs of customers."
• 3.3.2 "We evaluate how customers interact with the organisation through access channels and we use this information to identify possible service improvements and offer better choices."
• 3.4.1 "We have made arrangements with other providers and partners to offer and supply coordinated services, and these arrangements have demonstrable benefits for our customers."
• 3.4.3 "We interact within wider communities and we can demonstrate the ways in which we support those communities."
• 4.1.3 "We consult and involve customers, citizens , partners and staff on the setting, reviewing and raising of our local standards."
• 4.2.4 "We have developed and learned from best practice identified within and outside our organisation, and we publish our examples externally where appropriate."