Customer Feedback and Service Improvements
Customer feedback is vital to us. Having received almost 114,000 customer contacts over the past year (April2022 to March 2023), your comments about your experiences - whether it’s a complaint or other contact - are regularly used to understand how our services are performing, and to make improvements to the services we offer.
Some of the feedback we receive may be recorded as dissatisfied contacts or as formal complaints:
- A dissatisfied contact is usually a minor issue you have raised, which requires action to be taken including putting things right.
- A formal complaint is where you have raised a more serious issue, or where you contacted us about something you were dissatisfied with, which you feel is still unresolved after we have had an opportunity to deal with it.
Learning from Complaints:
Over recent months, we have made the following changes because of your feedback, by reviewing the learning points from complaints you have made:
Repairs:
- We are working closely with Platform Property Care (PPC) to ensure that their contractors understand the standard of work and behaviour that we expect of them when visiting your home. They are to arrive at jobs appropriately equipped and staffed, and are to conduct themselves courteously and respectfully.
- PPC holds a monthly toolbox meeting with their operatives to update them as a group on various operational matters. Some of these meetings are now held at Rooftop’s Head Office in Evesham, which provides a valuable opportunity to share experiences between PPC and Rooftop.
- Toolbox meetings may cover what is expected of PPC operatives when they visit customers, including their code of conduct and working practices, professional boundaries, and safeguarding issues.
- We are investigating how we can streamline and improve communications between PPC, subcontractors and Rooftop. This will be explored through weekly operational meetings between PPC and our Repairs team, as well as a monthly senior management meeting between PPC and us.
- A Repairs Improvement Project Group has been established to deal with issues arising from meetings and investigations.
Anti-social Behaviour cases:
- If you experience anti-social behaviour (ASB) and it is recorded as a formal case with Rooftop, your Neighbourhood Officer will emphasise the importance of completing and returning log sheets to identify the cause and frequency of incidents. They will explain to you that we will need your log sheets to take further enforcement action against the alleged perpetrator(s) of the ASB.
- As ASB cases may take a long time to be resolved, we will maintain ongoing contact with you to manage your expectations and to clarify your commitments; for example, keeping your Neighbourhood Officer informed even if the police become involved.
Complaint Handling:
- Our customer facing staff have received training on Rooftop’s complaints process, and associated training on logging and updating contacts and cases on our housing management system. This will provide a complete history of what you have reported to us, and what action we have taken, so that all our customer facing colleagues have access to the same information.
- This means we can keep you updated about matters you have raised with us, to hopefully prevent problems from escalating to formal complaints.
- We have recruited a Property Resolutions Coordinator. This new role at Rooftop will facilitate and support an effective approach to complaint management on the Repairs team. They are a first point of contact and coordinator for property related cases, which may involve PPC and other contractors.
Complaints and Dissatisfied Contacts 2022/23 Quarter 4: January to March 2023
Complaint Stage 1 (complaint cases):
During the three months to March, there were 54 new Stage 1 complaints, considerably more than the number of cases received in any of the first three quarters of 2022/23. The split of formal complaints is less skewed towards repairs, at 55.6% of cases, than it is for dissatisfied contacts (66.3% of contacts were about repairs). The proportion of complaints and contacts in relation to housing is identical at 18.5%. A far higher proportion of new Stage 1 complaints are about programmed works (13.0%), such as kitchen and bathroom replacements, or heating system upgrades, when compared to dissatisfied contacts during Quarter 4 (just 4.7%). This may indicate that more of our customers are raising more serious or long-standing issues about planned maintenance work.
Complaint Stage 2 (complaint appeals):
More cases are escalating to Stage 2, with 7 more in the three months to March (5 about repairs and 2 about housing matters).
Housing Ombudsman cases:
A further 3 cases were taken to the Housing Ombudsman in Quarter 4 (2 about housing and 1 related to development - new builds).
Dissatisfied Contacts:
401 contacts were classified as dissatisfactions in the three months from January to March 2023. There were almost 100 (or about one-third) more dissatisfied contacts in Quarter 4 than in any other quarter this year. This is in line with a typical seasonal peak throughout the winter months. Repairs comprised 66.3% or two-thirds of the dissatisfied contacts in the three months to March, which ties in with an increased volume of repairs, such as boiler breakdowns, at this time of year. The skew towards repairs means that the proportion of dissatisfied contacts in relation to housing (18.5%), programmed works (4.7%) and rent and service charges (also 4.7%) were all lower in Q4 than for 2022/23 as a whole (as reported in the full year summary).
