We know that despite best efforts, mistakes can happen, and we don’t always get things right, or meet the expectations of our customers. When something goes wrong, we need to find out why and put it right as quickly as possible. We aim to ensure that complaints are addressed fairly, effectively, and promptly.
We’ve produced a full report reviewing our performance and learnings in 2023/24:
Board Response to the Complaints Performance and Service Improvement Report 2023/24
We welcome the Housing Ombudsman’s new Complaint Handling Code and the opportunity this report gives us to show customers how we have performed over the last year and the areas we as a Board want to focus on going forward. We are very disappointed that we have let down too many customers over the last year.
When it comes to customer service, we know we can do better and that change is needed. We’ve heard this from our customers through responses to our customer surveys, through our complaints, and from our Customer Excellence Panel and Customer Experience Committee. We also know that expectations in the sector are, rightly, changing and that customers expect better from their landlords.
While we have seen improvements in our overall customer satisfaction this year, which rose to 59.5% from 51%, the level of satisfaction that our customers have with our approach to handling complaints was much lower, at just 12.6%. It’s clear that our customers aren’t happy with how we’re handling their complaints, and that needs to change.
We expect training and improved processes will reduce the number of complaints escalating to stage two and the Ombudsman over the next year. Meanwhile, the new learning log and service improvement plans will ensure we are using feedback from customers to improve and make changes to our services.
The Board wants to see that our teams are learning from customer feedback, not just to improve our complaint handling, but also to improve our services, so that customers don’t have to complain in the first place.
The Board and our Customer Experience Committee receive regular updates on complaints. We have set improvement targets for 2024/25 and will continue to hold teams to account, to ensure that our complaints handling and service provision continue to improve over the next year.
Andy McWilliams
Vice Chair of the Board, Chair of Customer Experience Committee
You can read our Complaints policy in full here, and our latest self-assessment against the Complaint Handling Code here.