CCHA Customer Service & Engagement Strategy 2022 - 2027

Introduction

Our Customer Service & Engagement Strategy supports the delivery of Castles & Coasts Housing Association’s (CCHA’s) Corporate Strategy 2022-27, specifically setting out how we will deliver the objectives which underpin our Customer Aim.

CCHA is committed to ensuring we put our residents’ voice at the heart of continually reviewing and improving the services we deliver, to ensure they meet residents’ needs and expectations, both now and in the future.

CCHA is committed to being a landlord of choice, across the communities we serve. It is imperative that this strategy also supports the delivery of the commitments set out within our Residents’ Charter, which was developed in partnership with CCHA residents.

CCHA is also committed to ensuring we continue to meet all obligations within the Regulator of Social Housing’s (RSH) Consumer Standards. Following the Government publishing the Charter for Social Housing Residents - the Social Housing White Paper (SHWP) in 2020, the RSH is reshaping consumer regulation to ensure the standards are aligned to the expectations set out within the SHWP.

During the lifecycle of this strategy, the RSH will update Consumer Standards and regulation for social landlords, to ensure they are meeting these expectations. The aims and objectives set out within this strategy will ensure we continue to meet the RSH standards.

Chapter 1 To be safe in your home

Building and fire safety is a paramount concern for residents. We are committed to ensuring that all homes are safe to live in, and have identified ways both to raise safety standards and to help residents feel safer in their homes.

To know how your landlord is performing

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

If tenants are to be able to hold their landlord to account, they need to know how it is performing and what decisions it is making. This will allow them to challenge their landlord when things are not working as they should, and to compare its performance with that of other social landlords.

To have your complaints dealt with promptly and fairly

Residents should get swift and effective resolution of complaints. But we heard from some residents that making a complaint can be difficult and take too long – and that it can sometimes take months for the complaint to be resolved, or for the resident to be able to access the Housing Ombudsman

To be treated fairly and with respect, backed by a strong consumer regulator for tenants

Transformation of consumer regulation is needed to further drive the right behaviours and hold landlords to account when they fail. This will complement the robust economic regulation already in place, which will be maintained

Chapter 5 To have your voice heard by your landlord

Stronger resident engagement by landlords will give residents a clearer voice so that they can hold landlords to account.

Chapter 6 To have a good quality home and neighbourhood to live in

We heard that tenants are proud of their communities and want greater investment in them. We want to ensure social tenants have good quality, decent homes and neighbourhoods, including access to green space and support for wellbeing.

Chapter 7 To be supported to take your first step to ownership

We are continuing to increase the supply of good quality social homes, and working to give as many residents as possible the right to purchase their own home.

The SHWP contains seven chapters, which set out what every social housing resident should be able to expect from their landlord. These chapters can be found below:

In conclusion, it is fundamental that through the delivery of this strategy, CCHA:

Continues to have robust mechanisms in place to encourage feedback from residents and involve residents in the development and improvement of services, to ensure we meet their needs

Is focused on delivering excellent services, that meet the needs of residents and that our services are focussed on first contact resolution

Allows residents to access services in a way which meets their needs

Utilises our residents’ voice to inform service delivery

Delivers the Customer Objectives set out within CCHA’s Corporate Strategy

Is meeting all of the requirements set out in the SHWP

Continues to meet the requirements and emerging changes to the Consumer Standards

Responds to building safety and legislation, and is committed to the building of a safer future for our existing and future residents

Delivers the commitments within our Residents’ Charter

The SHWP has a common thread running through each chapter, ensuring that the voice of residents is encouraged, listened to and used to ensure the services delivered by landlords are meeting the needs and expectations of residents. This is something CCHA is committed to.

Current Position

We are entering this strategy in a really strong position.

Since CCHA was formed in 2017, we have placed a strong emphasis on ensuring we have robust mechanisms in place to engage with our residents and receive feedback about the services we deliver, using this feedback and engagement to improve and enhance services; ensuring our residents’ voice is placed at the heart of everything we do.

Our previous Customer Experience Strategy helped us to put these strong foundations in place. We are committed to building on these foundations through the development and delivery of this strategy.

Some of these key achievements, delivered through the Customer Experience Strategy, are highlighted below:

• Development of a dedicated Customer Experience Team, responsible for ensuring the aims and objectives of the Customer Experience Strategy were delivered

• Development and implementation of a new Resident Involvement Framework, including Resident Feedback Groups (RFGs) and the Residents’ Scrutiny Panel (RSP), with excellent response and engagement rates from residents

• Development and implementation of a Complaints Policy and Procedure, fully aligned to the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code

• Co-creation of CCHA’s Residents’ Charter with residents

• Creation of a bi-annual Residents’ Voice Report, published to the Board and residents

• Complaints have continued to decrease since CCHA was formed in 2017

• Resident satisfaction with CCHA services has consistently been within the upper quartile, compared to peers

Vision, Aims and Objectives

Aligned to our Corporate Strategy, the vision for our Customer Service & Engagement Strategy is:

A truly customer-driven housing provider, which puts our residents’ voice at the heart of everything we do.

The Aims and Objectives for the strategy can be found below:

Customer Engagement Aims

Listening and learning: Encouraging resident feedback and using it to shape and improve our services

Effective communication: Keeping residents up to date about our services, what they can expect from us and how we are performing

Objectives

Making it easy for residents to provide us with feedback in a range of ways to meet individual needs.

Gathering real-time satisfaction feedback from residents about the services we deliver when a service is received, and in line with the requirements for the RSH for Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs).

Analysing satisfaction feedback from residents to identify any areas of dissatisfaction and taking action to improve services where there is a trend of dissatisfaction.

Contacting residents who say they are dissatisfied with a service delivered by CCHA, to attempt to resolve dissatisfaction at the earliest opportunity.

Customer Engagement Aims

Co-creation of services: Ensuring any new services, or changes to a service, are co-created with residents, to ensure they meet their needs.

Objectives

Setting ambitious targets for resident satisfaction, benchmarking these against other social housing providers and reporting satisfaction performance to our residents and our Board.

Having a range of ways residents can be involved with us, helping to shape and improve our services.

Supporting our RSP to carry out detailed, independent assessments of our services and delivering the agreed improvement outcomes from each exercise they carry out.

Seeing complaints and compliments, as an opportunity to learn and improve, making it easy for residents to raise a complaint, taking complaints seriously, handling them quickly and effectively, apologising and putting things right where we have got it wrong, and putting measures in place to prevent any future recurrences.

Producing one-off surveys to seek residents’ views where a new service, or a change to an existing service, is proposed.

Enabling residents and community groups to access our Community Fund and working in partnership to help support safe, thriving and inclusive communities.

Setting out our service commitments in our Residents’ Charter, developed in partnership with CCHA residents.

Publishing how we are performing against our commitments in the Residents’ Charter, following an independent annual review by our RSP.

Having a range of ways to communicate information to residents about our services and how we are performing, to meet individual needs and preferences.

Asking residents how they prefer to be contacted and then using this preferred method for all communications.

Producing and publishing an Annual Residents’ Report, to let residents know how we are performing.

Producing and publishing a bi-annual Residents’ Voice Report, to set out how we have engaged with our residents and how we have used feedback from residents to improve our services.

Customer Service Aim

Delivering choice driven, effective and trusted customer service, which meets the needs of our residents.

Objectives

Providing choice and flexibility to residents in the way they can access our services, to meet individual needs and preferences.

Developing and delivering a digital customer experience in partnership with our residents, for those residents who prefer to access our services digitally.

Having ambitious targets in place to resolve as many enquiries as possible at the first point of contact.

Being consistent in our delivery of services to residents across all interactions with staff. All staff will treat residents with respect, empathy and understanding at all times, and will have a focus on owning and resolving issues.

Being committed to equality, diversity and inclusion in everything we do.

How we will deliver our Objectives and measure progress

The strategy will be supported by a Delivery Plan (DP). The DP will set out the action which will be taken to meet our Aims and Objectives. The following mechanisms will be in place to report progress and achievements:

Internal Reporting

• Progress against the actions in the DP will be reported to the Audit & Risk Committee (A&RC) on a bi-annual basis and to the Board on an annual basis

• Progress will be reported through the bi-annual Residents’ Voice Report to the Board

• From 2023, the A&RC will receive an annual report of the RSP’s assessment of how CCHA is meeting the commitments in the Residents’ Charter

• From 2023, progress will be reported to colleagues, through CCHA’s intranet

External Reporting

• Progress will be reported through the bi-annual Residents’ Voice Report, published to residents

• From 2023, publishing the report of the RSP’s assessment of how CCHA is meeting the commitments in the Residents’ Charter

• Through the publication of CCHA’s Annual Report for residents

• On an ad-hoc basis through CCHA’s website and social media

How will we know when we

have

met our Aims?

The following matrix will be used to measure successful delivery of the strategy:

Customer Engagement Aims

Listening and learning: Encouraging resident feedback and using it to shape and improve our services

Objectives

Effective communication: Keeping residents up to date about our services, what they can expect from us and how we are performing

Resident satisfaction within the upper quartile of satisfaction benchmarking against peers, in line with regulatory TSMs.

Number of residents who have stated dissatisfaction with a service they have received are quickly responded to.

Complaints handled within target timeframe to be 100%.

Complaint learning outcomes implemented to be 100%.

Resident satisfaction with complaint handling to be within the upper quartile for the RSH TSMs.

Number of formal complaints received not to exceed 1.9% of the number of CCHA properties, annually.

Satisfaction feedback learning outcomes implemented to be 100%.

Co-creation of services: Ensuring any new services, or changes to a service, are co-created with residents, to ensure they meet their needs.

Compliments received about CCHA services to be 8% of the number of CCHA properties, annually.

RSP recommendations implemented within the agreed timeframe to be 100%.

Learning outcomes from RFGs implemented to be 100%.

Compliance against the commitments within our Residents’ Charter to be 100%.

Production and publication of a Residents’ Voice Report bi-annually.

Customer contact preferences captured and used for all communications to be 100%.

Production and publication of a Residents’ Annual Report annually.

Customer Service Aim

Delivering choice driven, effective and trusted customer service,which meets the needs of our residents

Measurement

Residents are able to access CCHA services in accordance with their preference, either face-to-face or via telephone, email, webchat, social media, or fit for purpose digital offer, aligned to the aims within the Digital Service Improvement Strategy.

Number of customer contacts resolved at the first point of contact to be 80%.

Number of Contact Management Cases resolved within target timeframe to be 100%.

Meeting all of the aims and actions within our Equality, Diversity & Inclusion Strategy 2022-27.

Carrying out an annual assessment against Regulatory Consumer Standards, ensuring CCHA continues to be fully compliant.