Our customer service
At NCFE, we take pride in providing exceptional customer service and exceeding your expectations at all times.
We strive to be as flexible and responsive as possible, answering queries efficiently and to a high standard to help make your life easier. Here are just a few of the ways we work to achieve this.
Communication
To communicate effectively, we’ll:
- Be easy to contact during our office opening hours
- Offer a webchat service from both the website and Portal
- Provide information in plain English
- Provide our publications and assessment materials in the Welsh or Irish language, or in an alternative format, where appropriate and on request.
Efficiency
To help you to progress your learners from registration to certification as easily as possible, we’ll:
- Confirm approval for any additional qualifications or awards you want to deliver within 1 working day of receiving your completed application form
- Allocate an External Quality Assurer (EQA) within 7 working days of learner registration
- Provide on-demand online assessment for suitable qualifications
- Send you Functional Skills assessment results within 6 working days
- Send you multiple choice external assessment results within 10 working days
- Award Direct Claim Status (DCS) for certificates if you meet our published quality criteria (please note if you have DCS and switch to NCFE, we’ll generally aim to honour your DCS like-for-like and will confirm our decision at approval stage)
- Process your certification claims within 24 hours.
Support and information
To support you to deliver our qualifications effectively, we’ll:
- Allocate you a dedicated colleague who can talk to you about your curriculum needs
- Publish our fees in a clear format with no hidden charges
- Send you our regular newsletter and news updates
- Provide an informative and accessible website
- Provide a range of training and networking events throughout the year
- Allocate an EQA when you register learners for each qualification or award you offer, who’ll visit at least once a year to provide support and sample learners’ portfolios.
Help us to continuously improve
Your feedback helps us to ensure we’re always providing the highest quality of customer service. Please email us at [email protected] or call 0191 239 8000 to share your thoughts on how we’re doing and any suggestions for improvement.
Service level agreements
|
Additional product approval |
Processed within 1 working day |
|
New centre approval |
Processed within 5 working days |
|
External Quality Assurer (EQA) |
Allocated within 7 working days of candidate registration |
|
Entries for external assessment |
Papers issued 7 working days before assessment |
|
Results for external assessments with multiple choice question papers |
Issued within 10 working days of assessment date |
|
Results for Functional Skills external assessments |
Issued within 6 working days of receiving assessment papers |
|
Certificates |
We will process your certification claim within 24 hours |
|
Email responses |
Within 48 hours |
Transfers and fast-track entries
If you’ve registered learners on the wrong qualification, or have a learner who needs to sit an assessment at short notice, please email us at [email protected] or call 0191 239 8000 and we’ll be happy to help. Please note that there is usually an administrative charge for this – we can give you all the details when you get in touch.