Our customers play an essential role in helping us improve the services we provide.
We know that by listening to our customers, understanding what’s important to them and using what they tell us, we can continually improve our services. Find out how we’ve used what customers have told us to improve our services.
Some of the recent changes we’ve made based on the feedback from customers are:
Before we started rewriting our Adaptations Policy, we asked customers to tell us what’s important to them should they need an adaptation to their home.
We did this using a variety of ways including – surveys, called customers and sent text messages. We asked customers from across our regions and neighbourhoods.
An adaptation is an addition or alteration in or around your home to allow you to live more independently, or to receive care in your home in a safe and secure environment for you and your carers. Adaptations can help if you are finding it difficult to get in and out of your home, move around the rooms, or if you have difficulty using existing facilities such as the kitchen, bath or toilet.
Customers told us they want Great Places to:
Complete adaptations work to their homes quickly and safely, provide information about adaptations that includes – what adaptations can I have, who do I contact, what happens if I’m not eligible for an adaptation. Customers also told us that they want our colleagues keep them updated about the progress of any adaptation works to their home.
Customers who had experienced our adaptation service were also asked to say how satisfied they are with the service and there are some gaps across each region.
The Adaptation service is being reviewed and customer feedback will be central to rewriting our policy. This will include: a consistent contribution by Great Places for all customers, a clear definition of adaptations and Great Places’ approach to supporting customers to maintain their independence, including how great Places can help when an adaptation cannot be carried out, working in partnership with Local Authorities.
We will also continue to check with customers once they have had an adaptation to their home to understand their experience and use their feedback to continue to improve the service.
Last year we asked you how satisfied you were with the email content from Great Places and what is important when we send information. We had over 170 respondents and some of our headline findings include…
Customers told us the following things were important to them:
As a result of this feedback we have made sure:
We will continue to gather feedback and respond to it, providing information to you in the methods and manners you want.
Last year we contacted customers living in Blackpool, Fylde and Wyre who had moved into their new home from January through to August 2021, to find out what was important to them when they bid, viewed and signed up for their new home.
We wanted to hear from customers about their experience of moving into their home so we could use what they told us to help us achieve positive changes to the service. We did this by calling customers, sending text messages, emails and surveys.
Customers told us they want Great Places to:
Customers also told us how satisfied they are with the service and this highlighted gaps across all areas.
We used what customers told us was important to them to make changes to the service. We have improved our ways of working across all of our regions. We have introduced a voids standard which details the standard and quality that all of our empty homes will meet. We have also improved our inspection regime so every empty home gets fully inspected to ensure it meets the agreed new standard before it gets handed over as ready to let to our customers.
To check the changes we made had worked, we contacted customers living in the same areas, who had moved into their home from September 2021 to ask about their experience of moving into their new home. What they told us showed that customer satisfaction had increased in all areas and that in 5 out of 10 areas we now meet and exceed customers’ expectations in the following: you could move in to your home when you expected to, agreed repairs were completed within timescales and that you know how to report repairs, pay your rent and contact your neighbourhood services manager.
We will continue to check with customers once they have moved into their new home to understand their experience and use their feedback to continue to improve the service.
On 4 April 2023, Great Places merged its two contact centres to create one Customer Hub. When you call Great Places’ Customer Hub we ask you to press buttons on your phone to tell us what you would like to do, or what you would like to talk to us about. By pressing those buttons you are helping us to put you through as quickly as we can to the best person or service to help you. This helps us to deal with what you want to talk to us about in your first call.
The team in our Hub can help with most questions or problems, but sometimes customers don’t press a button. This means that it can take much longer to help those customers. During February, we asked customers in the weeks before to tell us which buttons they would press for a given list of situations.
Justine Carroll, Head of Customer Contact said:
“I would like to say a massive thank you to everyone who took part in the survey. It’s really important to us that we make it as easy as possible for you to get through to the right person to help you. In your feedback there are some things that we need to change to make it clearer for our customers which option to choose. So their help has been invaluable.”
This was just the first part of this process and we’ll contact customers, including some customers who have already been involved, again in Summer to help us with the next stages of this consultation. There was a prize draw offered. The winner of this was Ms W, Blackpool.
