There are awards that make you proud because they recognise your products.

There are awards that recognise growth, entrepreneurship or innovation.

And then there are the ones that feel different.

For us, Best Customer Service is one of those.

Casa Argentina has been selected as one of the final eight businesses for the National Best Customer Service Award 2026, making this the second consecutive year that our customer service has reached the national final.

Last year, something rather special happened.

Casa Argentina won the National Best Customer Service Award 2025.

So to find ourselves back amongst the finalists in 2026 matters enormously to us.

But perhaps not for the reason you might think.

This isn't really a story about an award.

It's a story about you.

Our customers.

Because every improvement we have made since taking over Casa Argentina in October 2023 has started with one question:

What would we want if we were the customer?

The transformation of Casa Argentina started with the customer

When we took over Casa Argentina in October 2023, we knew the business had something incredibly valuable.

More than two decades of history.

A recognised name.

Fantastic Argentine products.

And thousands of people across Britain with a genuine connection to Argentina, its food and its culture.

But we also knew that selling good products wouldn't be enough for the company we wanted Casa Argentina to become.

We wanted to build the most trusted home for Argentine food and drink in the UK.

That required us to look far beyond what was inside the box.

We had to think about the entire customer journey.

What happens when you first discover Casa Argentina?

Can you find the information you need?

Can you understand the difference between Argentine meat cuts?

Do you know how to cook a provoleta?

Can somebody help if you've never prepared yerba mate before?

Do you know when your chilled or frozen order is arriving?

Is your parcel packed properly?

What happens if something goes wrong?

And perhaps most importantly:

How do we make you feel throughout all of it?

That changed the way we looked at customer service completely.

Customer service isn't what happens when something goes wrong

There's a common misconception that good customer service means dealing with complaints well.

Of course, that's part of it.

Mistakes happen. Couriers occasionally let us down. Products can be damaged. Humans are humans.

And when that happens, we believe the responsibility is ours to listen, react quickly, communicate honestly and make things right.

But exceptional customer service should begin long before there is a problem.

It is the accuracy of the information on a product page.

The way somebody answers the telephone.

The condition in which your Argentine beef arrives.

The communication before delivery.

The little unexpected detail inside a parcel.

The recipe that helps you cook something properly.

The person in our warehouse who notices something doesn't look quite right and stops the order before it leaves.

The follow-up afterwards.

It is hundreds of seemingly small decisions.

And when those decisions happen consistently, something far more important than a transaction begins to develop.

Trust.

PMMFS: Please Make Me Feel Special

Internally, we have a very simple phrase:

PMMFS – Please Make Me Feel Special.

It has become part of the language of Casa Argentina.

It doesn't mean giving customers expensive gifts or saying yes to absolutely everything.

It means remembering that there is a human being on the other side of every order.

Maybe you're Argentine and haven't tasted a particular product since leaving home.

Maybe your partner is Argentine and you're trying to recreate something they grew up eating.

Maybe you've travelled around Argentina and want to recreate your first proper asado.

Maybe you're British and have simply discovered that Argentine food is rather good.

Maybe you're a chef preparing hundreds of covers.

Or perhaps you're planning a family meal and the people sitting around that table matter far more to you than the steak we've delivered.

Our job isn't simply to sell you the steak.

Our job is to help protect the moment happening around it.

That distinction has influenced almost every system we've introduced.

Turning customer care into a system

There's another misconception about great service: that it relies on having naturally lovely people.

Lovely people certainly help.

We have plenty of them.

But if you want exceptional service to happen consistently as a company grows, care needs systems behind it.

Since October 2023, we have systematically mapped and improved the Casa Argentina customer journey.

We monitor customer feedback and reviews.

We measure service and operational performance.

We have improved delivery communications and tracking.

Our warehouse operates checks designed to protect product quality and order accuracy.

Our team follows the customer journey across marketing, e-commerce, customer service, warehousing, logistics and operations rather than treating those functions as completely separate departments.

New customers receive additional attention because we understand that a first order requires more trust than a tenth.

Feedback isn't filed away somewhere and forgotten. We use it to identify patterns and change processes.

And every week, the question remains the same:

How can we make this better for the customer?

For us, customer service belongs to everybody at Casa Argentina.

The numbers behind the trust

Feelings matter, but evidence matters too.

By July 2026, Casa Argentina had accumulated more than 1,400 public customer reviews across platforms including Google and Trustpilot, with an overall rating of approximately 4.9 out of 5.

Those numbers mean far more to us than vanity metrics.

A repeat customer is somebody who had a choice and decided to trust us again.

A review is somebody who gave up a few minutes of their own time to tell another person about their experience.

And sometimes criticism is even more valuable.

Customers see things we don't.

They challenge us.

They identify friction.

They tell us when an idea that looked fantastic internally isn't quite as fantastic from the other side of the checkout.

We listen.

Because ultimately the customer is the person who decides whether our customer experience is good – not us.

Sometimes customer service means going further

Systems create consistency.

But occasionally, a situation requires somebody to make a human decision.

Earlier this year, a new customer had ordered around 15kg of meat for an important family barbecue.

The courier delivery went wrong.

Technically, there were plenty of explanations we could have offered.

None of them would have rescued his barbecue.

So Max got in the car.

Six hours of driving later, the customer had his order.

We don't tell that story because driving six hours is a scalable customer-service strategy.

It obviously isn't.

We tell it because sometimes the right question isn't:

"Whose fault is this?"

It is:

"What does the customer need from us right now?"

The systems matter.

But judgement, ownership and care matter too.

Why this matters when buying Argentine food online in the UK

Trust is particularly important when purchasing food online.

And even more so when you're ordering specialist, imported, chilled or frozen products.

Customers looking for Argentine food in the UK need more than a website containing Argentine products.

They need confidence in the business behind those products.

Casa Argentina is a specialist UK importer, distributor and online retailer of Argentine food and drink, based in Croydon, London, serving customers across mainland Britain.

Our range includes:

• Argentine beef and traditional asado cuts
• Argentine empanadas and empanada discs
• Chorizos criollos
• Morcilla
• Provoleta and provolone cheese
• Dulce de leche
• Yerba mate
• Alfajores
• Chimichurri and Argentine seasonings
• Argentine wines
• Traditional Argentine pantry products and specialities

That specialism matters.

If somebody is looking for Argentine meat for an asado, we want to help them understand the cuts.

If somebody is discovering dulce de leche for the first time, we want them to understand what makes authentic dulce de leche different.

If someone buys provoleta, we want them to know how to cook and enjoy it.

And if an Argentine customer is searching for the flavours they remember from home, we understand that sometimes the product carries something that can't be measured in grams.

Memory.

Product quality and customer service belong together

Customer experience cannot compensate for bad food.

The product still has to deliver.

Over the past twelve months, Casa Argentina has received eight Great Taste Awards across products including Argentine-style empanadas, chorizo criollo, dulce de leche and our plain and seasoned provolone cheeses.

That recognition sits alongside our customer-service awards because the two things are connected.

A beautiful website followed by a disappointing product isn't a great customer experience.

Neither is a fantastic product delivered badly.

Our aim is to bring the two together:

Excellent Argentine food, backed by excellent customer service.

Recognition once is wonderful. Recognition repeatedly means something more.

Winning the National Best Customer Service Award 2025 was one of the proudest moments in Casa Argentina's history.

In 2026, Casa Argentina was also shortlisted for the Best eCommerce Customer Service Award, independently recognising the customer experience we are building online.

And now Casa Argentina has reached the final eight for National Best Customer Service 2026, returning to the same national final we won just one year ago.

For us, repeated recognition matters because customer service isn't supposed to be a campaign.

It isn't something you turn on for an award entry.

It has to happen on a wet Tuesday morning when nobody is watching.

It happens in the warehouse.

On the phone.

Behind a computer screen.

During the packing of the final order of a long day.

And especially when something doesn't go according to plan.

The people who deserve the recognition

This is where our team deserves enormous credit.

Customer experience is created by people.

The people sourcing products.

The people checking stock.

The people answering questions.

The people picking and packing orders.

The people handling deliveries.

The people improving our website.

The people solving problems before a customer even knows there was one.

Our values – Care & Deliver, Keep Our Word, One Team, Open & Approachable and Respect – aren't intended to decorate a wall.

They are there to help us make decisions.

Because culture eventually reaches the customer.

Always.

Is Casa Argentina one of the best places to buy Argentine food in the UK?

We are probably slightly biased, so we'd rather let other people answer that question.

Our customers have done so through more than 1,400 public reviews and an overall rating of approximately 4.9 out of 5.

Independent judges did so when Casa Argentina won the National Best Customer Service Award 2025.

The eCommerce Awards recognised the business again by shortlisting Casa Argentina for Best eCommerce Customer Service 2026.

And the National Entrepreneur Awards judges have now put Casa Argentina back amongst the final eight for National Best Customer Service 2026.

Add eight Great Taste Awards for our products, specialist knowledge of Argentine food and drink, UK-wide e-commerce delivery and more than two decades of Casa Argentina heritage, and we believe customers have a substantial body of evidence on which to make their own decision.

But none of that means we've finished.

Quite the opposite.

This award belongs to you

The customer must always remain the hero of this story.

Because without you, there is no award.

Every review.

Every recommendation.

Every reply to one of our Friday emails.

Every second order.

Every piece of criticism.

Every time you've told a friend about us.

Every family meal, birthday, Sunday lunch, restaurant service, barbecue and asado that you've trusted us to be a tiny part of.

You have helped build the Casa Argentina of today.

We are incredibly proud to be one of the final eight businesses competing for National Best Customer Service 2026, particularly after winning the award in 2025.

But what makes us proudest isn't the badge.

It's what that badge represents.

Thousands of individual moments when a member of our team had an opportunity to make somebody feel valued.

And tried to do exactly that.

So from everyone at Casa Argentina:

Thank you for trusting us.

We'll keep working very hard to earn that trust again with the next order.

And the one after that.