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Together with Tenants - Insights

25th February, 2021
jkerwood
Together with Tenants
Together with Tenants - Dad - MOBILE

Putting the customer first...

Together with Tenants is the sector-wide response: a fresh initiative that focuses on strengthening the relationship between tenants and landlords.

Defined by the new Together With Tenants charter, Together with Tenants reaffirms that the Boards of social landlords like Connexus are now directly accountable to their residents. 

  • Connexus became an “early adopter” of the Together With Tenants plan and charter back in 2019
  • Our experience has been that customer involvement – inviting customers into our ways of working – is key to improving the tenant-landlord relationship

This page covers some of our learning around our desire for more "Involved Customers". If you work in the sector, this one's for you.

Online customer involvement

Connexus has always consulted our customers, to find out how they feel our services are performing and gain ideas upon how we can improve. The use of the CiviQ, Open Consult Platform has revolutionised this process.

Whereas previously our customers had to involve themselves via post or in-person, CiviQ Open Consult is an online portal that any of our customers can sign up to, quickly and easily. This easy online access is giving us access to a wider range of our tenants’ views than ever before, allowing us to tailor our services to the needs of local communities.

Using an online consultation portal also allows tenants to take part whenever suits them, with this flexibility being another advantage over the more traditional in-person tenant panels. The volume of consultation feedback is at an all-time high, with a wider range of age groups responding than we had with the panels.

“The volume of feedback we received for our recent consultation on our repairs service was 117% higher than previous consultations. We can now use this feedback to shape our repairs service and to write our new repairs policy and procedure, all directly guided by our customers.”  Jacqui Gears - Connexus Communities Manager

See more about CiviQ - Open Consult
Together with Tenants - Customer

A combined approach

We want maximum engagement. We keep our proposition to customers simple...

3 categories cover all of our customer involvement. Customers know what to expect and know they can be involved by committing as little or as much time as they like.

Check and challenge Tenants monitor our services and report recommendations to our Senior Management Team. Our Complaints Review Group sees tenants monitor our responses to complaints, making sure we are handling complaints fairly. Tenants can also apply to become Tenant Auditors, getting involved with our compliance inspections in their local area.
Discussions about services

We regularly invite customers to be part of our consultations about our services. Getting a variety of views is important, and so our customers can take part via post, in person (pre-Coronavirus restrictions) and now using CiviQ, Open Consult. Also, our market research partners at IFF research contact customers after they have used one of our services, giving us a stream of up-to-date customer satisfaction data.
Community projects Reflecting our focus on actively supporting the communities across Herefordshire and Shropshire in which we operate, customers are encouraged to put forward ideas about how to improve their area and, where realistic we work with them to help turn the idea into a reality. Bigger community projects can apply for funding from our Community Development fund, which has supported everything from youth sports teams to communal gardens – and everything in between!

 

See our community pages

The results

Some of our geeky insights
  • Re-launched our involved customer offering to co-inside with the National Housing Federation's "Together With Tenants" webinar events from 11/02/21 - 5/03/21
  • Ran an integrated campaign across social media, email, AdWords and our website highlighting Together with Tenants and the perks with being involved
  • In the first 2 weeks of the campaign (11/02/21 - 25/02/21) we received 50 sign ups from customers wanting to "Be Involved"
  • Worked with one of our existing "Involved Customers" Lorraine on the messaging of this campaign
  • Highlighted our work to the sector through the National Housing Federation's Webinar 26/02/21
Together with Tenants webinar

We were thrilled to be invited to share more of our experience in customer involvement at the Together with Tenants National Housing Federation webinar on 26/02/21.

Of course, it’s one thing hearing it from us as a social landlord, but the true measure of customer involvement can only come from the customers themselves. This is why we were excited to invite one of our involved customers, Lorraine Teece, to speak at the conference. Lorraine spoke about what Together with Tenants means to her and why she feels being an involved customer is so important. 

“What would I say to anybody thinking about becoming an involved customer? Do it! This is our chance to get our voices heard and to make positive changes to our social landlords. Together, we really can make a difference.” – Lorraine Teece, Customer.

If you’re a housing association and would like more information about our approach and extra information on our insights, contact us here. 

 

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