The Diamond Award is for the best customer service offered by a call centre with less than 50 staff.

Judged by CRM Consulting, Toyota New Zealand's CDC scored the highest points when incoming calls were anonymously audited for a variety of criteria including; promptness and quality of reply, politeness, confident positive language, knowledge of products and services, providing further information and adding value to the customer's experience.

New Zealand's largest vehicle company was also named New Zealand's top Automotive Call Centre and was placed third in the email and website categories, while Aaron Wheeler received an award for one of the five top 'favourite' inbound customer service representatives receiving calls.

"It's a great vote of confidence in our 11 Palmerston North based team members who are a customer's first point of contact for Toyota New Zealand" said Spencer Morris, Toyota New Zealand's General Manager of Customer Service.

"The Customer Dialogue Centre possess a very strong customer focus which shows through their passion for creating long-lasting customer relationships."

"People are making more contact with us - the distributor - than they used to," said Mr Morris. "Their expectations are continually changing and we have to be more aware of how to adapt in order to create a more personalised experience."

The Customer Dialogue Centre staff work with the Toyota dealer network and Toyota New Zealand departments to provide an excellent customer experience.  Customer enquiries range from requesting connection to a Toyota dealership, sourcing parts, service and vehicle information, through to personalised case management.

An after-hours 0800 number also links callers to assistance from dealers or other appropriate services on weekends and public holidays when the Dialogue Centre is closed.

The Customer Dialogue Centre regularly exceeds it's target of answering 90% of calls within 10 seconds, while continuing to focus on customer based solutions across all their contact platforms; phone, email, letter and social media.

Mr Morris said the whole company supported the Customer Dialogue Centre, which has been operating for 20 years, as it is the voice of Toyota for many New Zealand owners and drivers.