Between 2021- 2024 the Customer Voice strategy has been the driver of the customer involvement business partners work plan. This has been alongside projects for other services and teams across Great Places. Our Co-design model is “doing best what matters most to customers.”
On this page you can see how this strategy has made it possible for us to “Do the right thing” for customers, by listening to our customers. The information is listed by by Directorate and the projects that have been delivered by the customer involvement partners over the last 3 years, with a focus on what changes have been made listening and acting upon our customers feedback.
The Tenant Satisfaction Measures have been live since April 2023 and are carried out by TLF Research.
There have been 1,260 responses year to date (LCRA February 2024).
Results are shared on our website with customers and on our intranet with colleagues and presented to our board.
Overall satisfaction: 72% of respondents since April 23 said they were ‘Fairly satisfied’ or ‘very satisfied’ with Great Places overall
At the beginning of 2024 we consulted with customers to understand what they think Great Places priorities should be for the next 3 years.
762 customers answered the survey via the OurVoice digital engagement platform, telephone calls and face to face contacts. Independence and Wellbeing customers were also included.
Customer priorities were:
The Customer Committee is a new standing committee of Great Places’ Board, which will add value by providing lived experience and expertise directly from customers. The Committee provides an important link between the Board and customers, who can hold Great Places to account on all customer-related matters. It will make sure that service updates and improvements for customers are delivered effectively with customer feedback in mind. All customers had the opportunity to apply.
The committee was recruited in January 2024.
An informal get to know each other session was held in February 2024 and the first formal meeting was held in the same month covering customer experience.
The Insight Group has undertaken scrutiny reviews of three core customer-facing services during 2024 and identified customer experience improvements around new build homes, customer information needs in relation to damp mould and condensation and the cost of living.
In 2023 our new digital engagement platform, Our Voice, was launched giving customers a new way to engage with Great Places.
Visit the Our Voice website to find details of live consultations and more information about how customers have fed in to previous projects.
In 2023 bespoke customer groups were established including the Customer Complaints Community and the Digital Readers Community.
As anti-social behaviour is something that any customer could experience at some point, Great Places used an emailer to 12,500 customers to invite them to tell us what would be important to them if they were going through anti-social behaviour (ASB). We used this information to send a survey to customers who had recently reported ASB to find out whether we met their expectations. 153 customers responded.
Colleagues were also asked to tell us what support and training they would want to be able to help customers when dealing with ASB. Customers and colleagues asked for similar things. As a result of these consultations:
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 by calling customers, sending text messages, emails and surveys. We asked customers from across our regions and neighbourhoods.
Customer feedback was central to rewriting our policy. This included: 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.
Since the review:
Customers who had made a complaint in the past 12 – 18 months were asked about their experience and what was important to them when making a complaint. This consultation was completed via phone and surveys.
Since the consultation we have written a new policy now named Remedies and Resolution Policy and we are currently awaiting the approval for our customer version of the policy.
The Customer Feedback Policy has been reviewed and this is compliant with Housing Ombudsman code.
We asked customers what is important to them should they need support from Great Places and find out how well they think we are doing now.
Using customer feedback, we have made some changes to how we publicise the service, we have designed a new service leaflet that is accessible for all customers. We are also working on designing a dedicated new tenancy coach page on our website where you can find all the information you need about the service.
We spoke to a group of customers who had previously used the service about their experience and the review confirmed that the programme was working well for our customers.
There are times when Great Places employs agency staff to help us cover vacant roles in our Independent Living, Extra Care and Independence and Wellbeing services.
We have contracts with employment agencies who support Great Places to recruit the right people to these roles. Our current contracts were ending, and we asked customers to tell us what is important to them when agency staff are working where they live and find out what they thought about the service, we used what they told us to inform the procurement of the Agency Staff contracts.
Since the review:
We asked a number of customers to tell us how they might be affected personally as costs rise and we used what they told us to help us decide how we can best support our customers.
From what our customers told us we have now built an offer for customer based on the customer voice. We also have developed a Financial Resilience Team to support our customers.
We asked 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.
We used what customers told us was important to them to make changes to the service. We improved our ways of working across all of our regions and we 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.
In 2021 we reviewed our grounds maintenance service and customer feedback about the service was central to that process.
We listened to what customers told us was important to them about the service and how dis satisfied they were with the contractors’ service, and we made the decision to change the grounds maintenance service provider and we brought the service in house from November 2021.
That means that the operatives out and about delivering the grounds maintenance service in our neighbourhoods will be Great Places colleagues.
In 2023 we asked customers who receive the grounds maintenance service about their experience of the service, one year on from the service being delivered directly by Great Places. This helped us to test if the service improvements made by bringing service delivery in house had worked and had improved the customer experience.
We asked customers to share their experience in a range of ways: by email via our survey monkey platform, by text via our textlocal platform and a number of our customers had the opportunity to complete the survey by telephone.
Since the review:
Customers were invited to be involved before, during and after internal and external renovation works at Bowland House in Blackburn. Works took place mostly during lockdowns in 2020 and 2021 to this high rise building of 80 flats.
Customers were given a range of ways to give their views in person at drop-ins or door-to-door and using a range of emails and text messages.
Despite the disruption during the works, 80% of the 44 customers who completed the final satisfaction survey gave satisfied scores of 8,9 and 10 out of 10, for the works overall.
We know that lots of customers take great pride in how their building looks. As such, it was no surprise when 438 customers responded to surveys to inform the procurement of window cleaning contractors.
Customers’ scores about what was important to them, and over 600 comments, were used to write and score customer-led quality questions that contractors were asked to answer. We’ll be using follow-up surveys once the new contracts have started to check how satisfied or dissatisfied customers are.
In order to make it quicker and easier for Great Places to choose a contractor who will do investment works in customers’ homes when these are due, Great Places has a ‘Framework’ or list of contractors they can use to arrange works with. The contractors on this list are chosen every 5 years and go through a rigorous selection process.
In 2018 and in 2023 this included answering 2 customer-led quality questions which were designed from comments received from customers who had had works done in the previous 12 months. These questions were about how contractors would meet customers’ individual needs during works, for example disabilities or language needs, and how the contractor would reduce and deal with any poor customer service offered by their teams. Questions were scored using information about what was important to customers.
These questions formed a high enough percentage of the marks available that poor answers here would mean that contractors would not be selected to work with us.
Design Guide
We reviewed our design guide and consulted with customers who had moved into their property a year previously via phone calls and a survey. This was to see what was important to them in their home and how had their needs changed since lockdown.
Our customers informed us that they struggled with space within the home and where we are unable to change the size of the properties we now ensure that we set expectations with our customers around the size of the property and also the who home has furniture placed within it so potential customers are able to clearly see the size and space within the homes. Customers also mentioned their gardens and following from this consultation Great Places have been in discussions with our contractor around ways we can improve this.
Throughout June, July and August 2023 we asked people who live and work in Longridge and Shaw Heath at a range of events and in a range of ways to quantify their priorities for the area using Great Places’ model of co-design (importance v. satisfaction). We did this by calling customers, sending text messages, emails, surveys, poster drops, door knocking and face to face at community events. This was also hosted on Our Voice, Great Places customer digital engagement platform.
After receiving 115 interaction on Our Voice our digital platform, 64 interactions at community events and 49 face to face contacts we had enough information to support the build in an action plan.
One action identified and completed was fly tipping, another area is youth provision in the area and our Community Partnership manager is currently in discussions with their local partner organisations.
You can read our most recent update on Our Voice and find out how feedback is already helping us.
A consultation was completed with customers, residents and stakeholders to find out what was important to them about living and working in the Wybourn area. We did this by sending out emails, texts, posting surveys, phone calls and face to face consultation.
We received 104 interactions on Our Voice our digital platform and other interactions such as face to face and telephone we have been able to identify areas to add into our Action plan.
You can read our most recent update on Our Voice and find out how feedback is already helping us.
Whilst some areas are still in progress of gathering information from customers, what our customers have told us has been written into the current master plan for each of the anchor neighbourhoods.
