Tenants’ Voice – improving services and communication

We all know that communication is key to giving good quality services and making sure people are happy with the service they receive.  We also know that we get both good and bad feedback on the way we communicate. 

Our Tenants' Voice - Improving Services group therefore chose to take on the challenge to see what we do and where they think improvements could be made.

As part of the review, tenants talked to Neil Bergin-Faragher, our Head of Customer Experience, and our Marketing and Communications Team to find out what is involved. They also looked at lots of information and documents used to set out the way we communicate.

They heard about the different ways tenants and customers can contact us and also our new customer style framework, which is currently being rolled out across the Group.  This customer service style is called RAMP and stands for:

R – resolve issues

A – adapt our service

M – make it easy

P – proactive communication

Tenants made six recommendations, suggesting ways that communication could be improved.  These recommendations included making sure the Group’s corporate style is used consistently; looking at how contractors communicate with tenants, and improving tenants’ confidence in automated services.

By putting these in place they hope to see the number of calls go down, the number of complaints go down and satisfaction from tenants and customers go up.

Neil said: “It was such a great opportunity to talk to our Tenants’ Voice group about how we can improve communication with our tenants and customers. It is such a hot topic at the moment as we have heard our tenants tell us via the Tenant Satisfaction Measure surveys, other transactional surveys, complaints and various face to face events and activities, that communication is something we can get better at. We’re committed to delivering against the six recommendations made by the Tenants’ Voice members and have ensured this is reflected in a number of projects and initiatives such as RAMP over the coming months.”

If you want to see more information about the communication review you can find the full report and details on the scrutiny reviews – communications section on this webpage: Your Tenants' Voice - Improving Services group | Progress Housing Group (progressgroup.org.uk)