Page 51 of 72
Our Customers
We will transform our customer
experience
We value the choice people make to become one of our residents and firmly believe they deserve excellent customer service in return. This is the same as for 2014/15 although we are making good progress with our plans to make it easier for customers to talk to us.
Our Value for Money Self-Assessment
Page 52 of 72 What we’ve done
We said in our last VFM statement that we would look to see how we could improve the customers’ experience for our residents. Our recent customer satisfaction survey in 2014 showed a reduction in ‘listening to resident views and acting on them’. We are confident that the actions we have taken will help to improve our customer satisfaction in the long-term.
We opened a new customer service centre at Plumer House this was to replace the local areas offices and offers enhanced service for residents. Plumer provides
accessible face-to-face customer service and training facilities for schemes including the Learn for Free for residents.
We rolled out mobile working to enable Housing Officers to work more closely with customers within their own communities.
The STAR customer satisfaction survey highlighted that customers do not feel that they are listened to. As a result we are reviewing how we measure customer
satisfaction and an organisational approach is in development. We have embarked on the ‘first contact’ project to improve our customer experience by enabling the contact centre to deal with the majority of enquiries first time, handling calls only once. A “call back” system is in place to gather complaints handling feedback to use for future service improvements, and to assist in reviewing customer satisfaction questionnaires and approaches being taken to this.
We consulted with residents and staff to create a new draft complaints policy.
We rolled out Mary Gober Customer Service Training to new staff and ran an Embedding and Sustainability session for managers.
We trained two customer service staff to respond to customer queries via social media, opening up a new convenient channel for customer contact and responding to customer demand. Our audience base stands at over 1,000 for both Twitter and Facebook (2,000+ total) and continues to grow.
We recruited two Contact Centre Adviser Apprentices who are undertaking their NVQ2 in Customer Service in the coming year.
Under Equality and Diversity we achieved “Gold” accreditation in April 2014 which is now embedded throughout the organisation with 11 Ambassadors in place. All policies are accompanied by an Equality Impact Assessment to prevent
discrimination and are scrutinised in relation to consultation with residents. We became members of the Dementia Action Alliance and have committed to becoming a “Dementia Friendly Organisation”.
We continued to work with the Tenant Participation Advisory Service (TPAS) towards achieving accreditation in Resident Involvement and 500 staff have received
awareness raising training. We developed a draft resident involvement strategy, a new menu of involvement and have supported all our residents groups through a review of their needs. We created a new Resident Scrutiny Team, made up of
Page 53 of 72
residents and leaseholders, and are providing them with training and guidance so they can assess what we do and make recommendations, including on VFM.
We helped 84 customers to downsize or transfer homes, largely as a result of our Welfare Reform agenda to ensure we support residents in making sound financial decisions which achieve sustainable tenancies and their wellbeing.
We completed a ‘Lean’ review of our Voids Service and properties are now ready on average within 18 days resulting in people being housed more quickly and fewer days of lost rental income equating to approx. £280,000 per year. Satisfaction with our voids and re-letting service is high as customers know when they can expect to move and have all paperwork in place on that date. Sign up takes place in the property, along with uncapping gas and heating demonstrations to reduce the number of visits required by staff and make the experience better for customers. What we’re going to do in 2015/16
The ‘first contact’ project continues so that we achieve our ambition for customer service excellence. The key outcomes planned are:
º We will upgrade our telephony software, introducing Caller Line Identification. With effect from 1/7/2015 OFCOM require all calls to 0800 and 0808 numbers to be free from mobiles. This will support future rationalisation of PCH contact numbers for residents.
º Customers can currently report a repair online and make rent payments through the allPay application. We intend to review and implement improved accessibility by providing Self Service options where feasible.
º We are implementing a ‘Lean’ approach to our Repairs Service which links to regulatory compliance and a reduction in costs. This requires having a CRM (Customer Relation Management) System able to make customer information and other key data available to the staff across the business.
We will be finalising the draft complaints policy.
We are signing up to the Chartered Institute of Housing Equality Charter.
*Subject to a review of plans following the Government's 2015 Emergency Budget Back to contents
Related information
Key strategy – PCH Business Plan
Page 54 of 72
Our Communities
Page 55 of 72