Tenant Satisfaction Measures – what we’re hearing from you
We’ve published our latest results against the Tenant Satisfaction Measures, which includes feedback collected from almost 300 residents between April 2023 and the end of October 2023.
Over two thirds of residents said they were happy with the services we provide and the quality of their homes. Over 70% told us they felt safe in their homes.
Tenants most frequently referred to the repairs service, particularly the timescales to complete repairs and outstanding repairs as an area in need of more improvement. We can also increase satisfaction around communication on repair updates and other services we provide, particularly when we aren’t able to complete a repair on the first visit to your home.
We also saw lower satisfaction scores for how we respond to complaints and escalations and for some of our communal cleaning services – all of these areas form part of our continuous improvement activity between now and the end of the year.
Repairs
We know that providing repairs more quickly and keeping residents informed about the progress of a repair or what will happen next is the most important thing we can do to improve overall satisfaction. Our target this year is to complete 90% of routine repairs within 28 days. We are currently completing 70% of them in that timeframe (November 2023). We have a plan in place to deliver the improvements we know are needed, and we will provide monthly updates on our website until we have got timescales for completing repairs where we want them to be.
Response times
Lack of response remains a theme that goes across all complaints. In most cases the resident made contact but often could not speak to the responsible team/colleague or we were slow to respond. We know we need to make it easy for you to get in touch with us.
We have successfully reduced the number of days it takes to respond to residents who contact us through our website to five working days. We are making better use of technology to improve the services we offer – as part of this, customers can now request a call back rather than waiting in call queues during busy times, and our phone system will recognise the resident’s account from their phone number which is automatically brought up on screen.
Communal areas
We know how important it is to ensure we maintain communal areas. As part of this we are in the process of procuring a new cleaning contract to drive improvement and working on a neighbourhood maintenance improvement plan. We also carry out regular action days in neighbourhoods where dissatisfaction around the quality of the neighbourhood and communal spaces is lowest to understand how residents feel and what we can do to make improvements.
How we handle complaints
The recent scoring may be linked to low satisfaction with how residents feel we are listening to and acting on their views. We know we need to make sure follow-up actions identified as part of a complaint are completed in a timely way. We want to remind residents that our complaint handling process is here to support you and we aim to ensure tenants who go through this process are satisfied with the outcome. We will always listen, learn from what has happened and do our best to put things right. We will continue to monitor these measures and work hard to build on the current results.
Moving to telephone surveys
We are moving to 100% telephone-based surveys as the way we gather feedback on our performance against the Tenant Satisfaction Measures. These will continue to be carried out by our partner Acuity. Until now we have also been gathering data through online surveys. Moving to telephone-based surveys will allow for greater probing into the things we need to do to improve services for residents. We are also working towards carrying out more transactional surveys for repairs and the customer service hub to ensure we offer a survey on 25% of transactions.
