Changes we’ve made from customer feedback

We welcome all feedback – good or bad – as we want to make sure our services are the best they can be.

We also believe that being open and transparent with our customers and partners is important, so below you can find our most recent feedback information, including what we have done to improve our services where our customers were not happy.

Complaints

In the year April 2023 to March 2024, we received 60 complaints that were upheld. This means a service failure was recognised.

We received 94% satisfaction for how we handled these complaints, against a target of 90% satisfaction.

We have made several changes to our services as a result of these complaints:

• We delivered Customer Care training to all customer-facing staff
• Refresher training on handling anti-social behaviour has been delivered to relevant staff to remind us of the importance of keeping customers updated
• We now do more thorough safety check of gas hobs
• The compensation policy for heaters and dehumidifiers has been changed to get money to customers quicker
• We have new consultation guidelines to help staff conduct thorough and fair consultations with customers
• We have amended our recharge invoices to make items being charged for clearer to customers
• We have worked with our out of hours call handlers on speech analytics, to flag high risk issues like fire or gas leaks
• We changed our roofing contractor following complaints from customers
• We will be carrying out a research project in 2024 around what makes an excellent repairs service.

Compliments

We consistently receive more compliments from customers than complaints.

We make sure customer compliments are passed on to the staff involved and their managers, and we share these compliments on our staff intranet site, The Lounge.

 

You said, we did

We listen to all feedback that come from customers via different methods – surveys, research projects, customer groups and panels, customer events and so on.

Here’s some of the services we’ve changed in 2023/24 because of customer feedback.

From the Grounds Maintenance scrutiny review, new maps were uploaded to the website to help customers find out who owns the land across our neighbourhoods.

From the website scrutiny review:

• staff training on how to update the website, so information can be more accurate and up to date
• a commitment to update the events calendar regularly
• an enhanced contract with our web developer to ensure quality
• a new chatbot to offer customers a new way to get answers to their questions quickly and easily
• an annual review of the Get Involved pages – which has led to more customer content, more photos, and customer training opportunities listed

From the Shared Ownership scrutiny review:

• Better information and relevant policies uploaded to the website
• Relevant information available on the customer portal specifically for shared ownership customers
• Shared customers are invited to receive our e-newsletter
• A visit by the neighbourhood housing officer six weeks after the customer has moved in to ensure they have settled in well
• Improvements to the service charges to make third party invoices clearer

The Together Greatwell Group:

• Now do mythbuster pieces on social media and in the newsletter to dispell some myths that people often get wrong
• Worked with the Customer Assembly on the Aids and Adaptations policy, to produce a customer friendly version

The Customer Assembly have updated the Untidy Gardens policy, to enhance the section around organisations that we work with that can offer customers support with their garden.

A service testing project on the Customer Assistance Pot has led to more monitoring of how successful applications are to the pot, and further research into what causes financial difficulties for our customers.