Listening, learning and improving
On 1st April 2023, the new Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) were made a requirement by our Regulator. These are a set of questions we must ask you about things like our repairs service, complaints process, or how we’re listening to your views.
Mindful of our responsibilities as a professional landlord, we introduced these questions early in July 2022.
In doing so, we identified the following as some areas to work on.
Already we have made changes that have been making a difference.
Making it easier to deal with us
Knowing it’s a pain waiting on hold to speak to us, we introduced a new way to request a call back if it’s going to take over five minutes for us to answer the phone.
We also setup a way to book telephone appointments, so you know when we will call you to discuss your enquiry.
Feedback from Thrive Customer Voice members told us that messages about repair appointments were confusing, so we’ve been reviewing the wording used.
After looking at how you are told about upcoming and follow-up repairs, we are pleased to share that we have:
- reminded our engineers to make sure you know when they are on their way
- introduced a new process to make sure you know when your next repair appointment is before we leave your home.
Using your feedback, we made some changes to our website homepage to make it easier to access information about our repairs service. We’re pleased to see this making a difference!
It was also clear that you wanted to know when communal cleaning and grounds maintenance visits were due. Our team worked hard on a new feature on our website so you can view scheduled visits and safety information for your building.
Doing what we say we will
Your feedback is also telling us that we don’t always keep you informed about other appointments and enquiries you have, such as anti-social behaviour cases. To improve this, we are:
- introducing a rota to make sure our colleagues have time in their working day to respond to any outstanding queries
- making system changes to make sure outstanding enquiries can be monitored and customers are responded to
- providing colleague refresher training on record keeping.
We know there have been challenges with communal cleaning and grounds maintenance. Our Estates & Facilities team has been closely monitoring these contracts and have kept you informed with regular updates on our website and in newsletters.
67.3% of survey responders voted to keep the existing cleaning service for another 12 months to avoid a rise in costs. Acting on this, we kept the same service and worked with the contractor to employ a new set of cleaners. We’re pleased to have seen this make an improvement!
Listening and acting on your views
Last year we introduced Thrive Customer Voice, a new way for you to have a say your way. We shifted away from a fixed panel of seven customers and listening to the voices of a few, to the voices of many.
The model works by using your feedback, business performance data and other insights to identify areas for review. This makes sure we’re focusing on things that matter to you.
At the end of the financial year…
By working together with members, we have:
- shaped the Annual Report for Tenants using topics you told us you are interested in
- delayed replacing or cleaning contractor as you told us you would prefer to keep the existing service for now
- introduced more Saturday appointments for gas servicing (if needed)
- added more guidance into the Thrive Deal about CCTV, Ring doorbells and pets
- promoted our website’s helpful tools for translation, reading aloud and other assistance which has resulted in a 32% increase in usage!
- used more animation and video content to promote safety messaging
- given refresher training to our team, reminding them to call when they are on their way to see you and to remember to book an appointment with you there and then if any follow up work is needed after your repair.
Read more about the successes of Thrive Customer Voice on page 14 of our Annual Report for Tenants.