Say Something about the state of social housing customer service

If you do the Twitter thing, follow me at @hotpixUK
or LinkedIn here http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy

Well, the week of the big CIH Manchester Get-together has been and gone. I had a great time there, learnt some stuff, an old friend treated me to a free lunch and I got a lot done.  Great stuff, it works great in Manchester IMHO.

While there, I was chatting about a new survey that is just about ready to start, covering something close to my heart, "The State Of Customer Service Operations in the Social Housing Sector". Or SOCSOITSHS for short, although I am the first to point out, they probably should have paid a PR agency to come up with something snappier than that.

You will know that I have recently teamed up with Ade Capon & Brett Sadler recently to pull together insights on 'Customer self Service'. That was a very rewarding exercise and over 100 RSL's, ALMOS, councils managing housing and other Registered Providers participated in that.

As a result of my dogged mission to improve social housing IT and help everyone to procure it, implement and use it better, I am on-board with this one and may well be involved with some road-show events. This will be when the results are out, later in the year, around the UK.

The survey is pretty intensive and looks at service centre penetration, what they are used for etc. Is your service centre specialist, having a dedicated repair or lettings team? Maybe you expect its role to diminish with growth of channel shift, as your customer self service portal takes off? What are your challenges?

Do you find your call volume is increasing? How much of that is 'waste'. By waste, I means calls and enquiries that should never really have come into the service centre. Here are some examples:

• Tenants call to ask,"When's my repair appointment"?
• Tenants call to ask someone to help them the letter they have just been sent.

Do you have the solutions to these common conundrums? Here's some if you are struggling:

• Send your customers a free SMS text on setting or moving that appointment. The cost of that is about 10p to you (It included), the cost of your 'waste' call is £6-10.
• Design your letters to read in plain English. If it's a statement, don't tell your customers that they are in debit or credit, tell them how many pounds they are "in-front" or "behind". Not rocket science I am sure you will agree....

You may be chuckling at that last one, but honestly, isn't that much easier to understand?

Anyway dear reader, please pass a link to this on to your customer service team and let's see your opinions on SOCSOITSHS.

Here's the link, take the survey:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1LQ4wx3WtsBGlr4wLuUprdTuti9KBSMS_GSV9eQmJRIk/viewform?c=0&w=1

Related Post: Be honest, how well planned are your projects?

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I would be pleased to connect with you on LinkedIn - http://uk.linkedin.com/in/tonysmiththathousingitguy Message me with any issues or queries, you would like to be explored in this blog. We generally receive a couple of suggestions each month.


James - say Something.
(c) Tony Smith, Acutance Consulting www.acutanceconsulting.co.uk 07854-655009


Access a quick list of our Social Housing ICT blog posts here
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