Improving our services
This is about building trust in our services, so that you know what to expect and find it effortless to interact with us. We're transforming our services and the way we work to improve your experience.
Making it easier to contact us
New contact channels
In November 2023 we introduced new easier ways for you to get in touch with us, including a new and improved online account, live chat, WhatsApp, and a help and support section on our website.
Within the first 5 months we saw great results, with call wait times reducing from 15 minutes to averaging between 5 to 7 minutes, and use of new channels continuing to rise.
Promoting self-service
Along with our new channels to make it easier to contact us, we’ve also been promoting self-service to help you help yourself. We launched a new help and support web page that has useful information on a wealth of topics, as well as a new online account with exciting features such as:
- Checking the balance on your account
- Paying your rent securely
- Easily setting up a direct debit
- Raising and tracking your repair
- Chatting with an advisor
Ultimately, we want you to have the information and functionality you need at your fingertips 24/7, and build capacity to continue helping customers with more complex situations on the phone or in person. We’re excited about transforming other aspects of our online offering that will, for example, enable you to book and track every stage of repairs to your home.
Keeping you informed
Providing a good customer service
One of our new business priorities for 2024/25 is about doing what we say we’ll do when it comes to communicating with you. This means we’ll aim to be even better at keeping the promises we make and keeping you informed every step of the way, for example, when you have a repair in progress.
Regular newsletters
We send a monthly email newsletter to around 34,000 customers (everyone we hold an email address for) and a quarterly printed newsletter to around 6,000 customers.
We’ve been working hard this year to redesign both newsletters, making them more engaging and including more useful and relevant information to you. This has been successful so far, with the average open rate increasing to 57% in 2024, above industry norm. This will continue to evolve - we're listening to your feedback and will shape content that you've said matters most to you.
Introducing a new Service Charge and Leaseholder team
We've introduced a new Service Charge and Leaseholder team, so that you can have a single point of contact in a service charge officer, who can provide specialist advice. This means that we're able to deliver a better customer experience for our leasehold and shared owner customers.
Learning from complaints
We're committed to developing our services to improve customer experience, to build trust and confidence in everything we do. If we do get something wrong, we recognise the need to own it and put it right.
We learn from your feedback to improve our services. We hold twice yearly customer feedback meetings for staff, and also monthly insight meetings where we discuss your feedback to ensure we hear our customers' voice and adapt our services accordingly.
Some of the initiatives we put in place last year included:
- Centralising our complaints service, meaning there’s an independent team to handle stage 1 complaints and provide resolutions to customers
- Introducing an ambitious Repairs Development Plan with the key aim of reducing wait times for repairs. This has had a positive impact on wait times plus a reduction in the number of complaints we’ve received
Find out what else we’ve implemented in our annual complaints performance report.
VIVID Plus, our charitable arm, helps our customers and communities thrive. The reason for being and core themes remain - to provide you if you need it with tailored individual tenancy sustainment services, and support community-led priorities to ensure you feel proud of where you live.
With the continued high cost of living, our focus over the past year has been on doing everything we can to help you through this, with targeted support, funding and partnerships to maximise positive impact on yours and your families lives.
Over the last year we have:
Secured
of income for customers*
*Secured £10.3 million income for customers made up of ongoing and backdated awards of benefit, including giving advice to customers with new tenancies
Supported
customers into work or to enroll on a training course
Supported
customers within our tenancy support team
Allocated
of our welfare fund to customers in need
