Wednesday 9th July 2024
Hi there and welcome to This Week at Orwell. This is your video newsletter sharing stories from around the Orwell community this last week.
Below is a transcript taken from the conversation between Claire and Tony. There may be some formatting errors due to the conversion.
Claire Townley
Hello and welcome to this week at Orwell. This week I'm going to be talking to Tony Long, our director of customers and communities, about the tenant satisfaction measures. So, at Orwell, we value the input of our customers and regularly conduct surveys to understand how we can improve our performance and meet our customers’ needs. So, we'll shortly be contacting you by e-mail or text to say a huge thank you to all of you for taking part in the tenant satisfaction measures.
Or the TSMs for shorts that were carried out by our contractor TLF last year and to share the results with you. So, the TSMs have been designed by the regulator of social housing to drive up standards and improve the quality of social housing by ensuring providers are accountable for the services they deliver. So, there's 22 measures. 12 of these measures come directly from customer feedback surveys and then 10 come from information we hold on our systems about our operational activity.
Savvy was carried out by telephone to 3537 tenants between 1st of April 2023 and 31st of March 2024. So, 511 customers gave us their feedback. So overall, 76.2% of customers were satisfied by the service provided by Orwell. So, I am delighted to have the director of customer communities here who has kindly come along to talk more about the TSM.
So Tony, are you doing you alright?
Tony Long
Hi, Claire. Thank you. And yeah, just to reiterate what you said, thank you ever so much for all the customers who are involved in responding to the TSMs, you know, really important for us. And I just want to say thank you as well.
Claire Townley
Brilliant. So, are you ready to get started?
Tony Long
Yeah, sure. Let's go.
Claire Townley
Cool. So, tell me more about why the TSMs are important for oral.
Tony Long
Yes, it's a really good question. They are really important to us. I mean first and foremost, they give us a real like temperature check about how our customers are feeling and what they think about our services and ultimately the information that we get back will help us to provide better services and really gain meaningful insight into how we're performing. And for me, we're really interested in the overall customer experience and I think.
Tony Long
That's what the TSMs help us with understanding how it is for our customers and tenants and how they experience our services. But yeah, it's really important for our customers as well because it gives them.
Clear visibility of how we're performing in the key areas which impacts on them and it shows them how well their landlord is doing and it can be a comparator, you know, to other landlords that, that they may know and ultimately our customers can hold us to account. And I think that's really important.
So yeah, I think the thing is, yes, it's a really important piece for us.
Claire Townley
Absolutely. So, are there any results which you're proud of?
Tony Long
Oh, yes, yes, absolutely. We had some, you know really positive results and I think there's two measures which really stood out for me. Firstly, the measure around how a landlord treats its tenants in a fairly and with respect and we scored, you know, really well in that area 83% or just over 83%. And that tells me that when we're interacting with our customers, our customers are really happy that we're doing that in the right way. And that's really, really pleasing to see.
And the second TSM, that as an organisation we're really, really proud of, is that you know, over 85% of our customers were satisfied that their home is safe and ultimately, I mean this is the most important measure for us that we provide, you know, safe homes to our customers and we do a lot of work around compliance around gas safety, fire safety, asbestos, Legionella electric safety and what that tells us is that we're doing a really, really good job there.
So, we were really, really proud of those results in particular.
Claire Townley
Oh, thank you for that, Tony. So, Orwell scored 39.5% for complaints. So, what do you think about Orwell's approach to complaints handling?
Tony Long
Yeah, this is a really interesting measure and one that we've been looking at quite closely because this statistic, when we look at it, you know, we think 39 1/2%, you know it sounds and feels quite low. But as a sector and you know we're performing well, we're higher than the national average, which is around 34%.
So, we recognise, you know, we've made quite a lot of investment in this area in the last year. We've invested in staff, we've improved our procedures.
And we've, yeah, we feel we've got a robust system in place to responding to complaints, but we know we recognise we can do better and for me, I think the areas where we need to improve and we need to be getting better at, you know, really listening to our customers and their complaints meeting with them and really understanding the impact of when we don't do something as well as we want to, you know the impact it has on them and their lives and their overall experience.
And doing everything that we can, you know, to resolve it. Excuse me.
Claire Townley
No, that's great. Thank you for that, Tony. So, is this over the next 12 months or is there more improvements that you're looking at doing as well?
Tony Long
Oh, we're. We're constantly looking to improve our services. There's always something happening and always something going on at all. Well, you know we as we highlighted in in the introduction, you know the overall satisfaction was really good.
Tony Long
Our satisfaction repairs is high. It's 74, just over 74% and our homes, our customers are satisfied that they're well maintained, it's over 75%.
Where we recognise where we need to improve is the time it takes us to reach customers in particularly around repairs.
We know when we come to a customer's home and we conduct the repair, they're generally very satisfied, but our customs have been telling us that it's taking too long to get that repair done. So, we're doing a lot of work here at all. Well, we're reviewing our repair service and how customers contact us at customer services. So, we're looking at more effective repairs diagnosis, looking at how we schedule our jobs better and prioritise them and generally be more effective and efficient.
Tony Long
So, there's lots of stuff going on, but absolutely, you know, the next 12 months our priorities are repair service.
Claire Townley
That's good to hear. Thank you, Tony. So, we'll all well be asking the TSM questions again this year.
Tony Long
Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Customers can be expected to be contacted. Those who've received a service and those who have not.
We will be working with our partners, TLF research again, who carry out the surveying on our behalf. So, if you do get contacted, please do give involve, give your feedback. It really does help us.
Claire Townley
Fab so how can customers find out more about the TSMs?
Tony Long
There's lots of information out there, but if you want all the information and a real detailed look, I recommend you go to the you Gov website and there's a huge amount of information about the TSMs there from the regulator of social housing. So that'll be my advice to the customers.
Claire Townley
Thank you so much Tony, for joining me today and answering my questions. So, if you have any more questions for Tony, feel free to comment below or contact us on comms at orwellhyphenhousing.co.uk. Thank you so much Tony for joining. It's been such a pleasure.
Tony Long
No problem, really. Enjoyed it. Thanks, Claire.
Claire Townley
That's all right. So just to remind customers, we also do send out transactional surveys. So following services such as repairs or when you join us as a new customer. So, it'd be really grateful if you return these surveys, we value your feedback. And of course, there is a chance for you to win £100 also. So, it's definitely worth entering that so well, that's it for today. I've been Claire and this was this week at Orwell. Have a lovely week. Bye.
Tony Long
Bye.
