THE Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) has announced a significant rise in new student numbers and membership at the end of its 2011/12 operating year.

ACCA now has 432,000 students across 170 countries, with over 70,000 new students starting studies for the ACCA Qualification over the period. Total membership increased by nearly five per cent to 154,000, the organisation said in a press release.

Sustained investment in customer service over the past 12 months has seen customer service targets reached and online customer experience improved, added the ACCA, noting that the organisation has seen a significant rise in satisfaction with the public value created through its global policy positions and activities.

“ACCA’s results show that we continue to deliver towards our goal to be the leading global professional accountancy body in reputation, influence and size. We’ve seen strong demand for the ACCA Qualification, with significant growth in established markets – such as China, Singapore, Malaysia, the Caribbean and the UK – and in new markets too,” said Helen Brand, ACCA’s chief executive.

“We’ve taken significant steps forward in our quality of customer service. Our members and students are now starting to see the benefits of investments made in recent years to improve our processes, IT infrastructure and customer service levels. This has included our customer contact centre, ACCA Connect, now being open 24/7, 365 days a year.”

Some key indicators, according to the ACCA, are that 75 per cent of students and 70 per cent of members now say ACCA is easy to do business with online; 85 per cent of exam entries are now made through the ACCA website and 90 per cent of online student registrations are now completed within seven days.

“This is a good outcome. We know we need to go further to improve satisfaction ratings even more and have plans to increase our performance around service delivery, including the website. I remain committed to ensuring that we provide a good and consistent standard of customer service and to innovating what we do to ensure we continue to meet the needs of employers,” said Brand.