The sector’s approach to fixing things for our customers is broken. The current model consists of an approach where we wait for things to go wrong and then wade in to fix them. It’s an approach that costs time, money and creates a high level of disruption for our customers. Our Head of Place, Jo Griffin, is on a mission to change that.
We want everyone to have a place their proud to call home and key to making sure that happens is a shift from a reactive service to a pre-emptive one - getting in and fixing things before they breakdown.
Place-based approach – what is that?
Jo, head of place, has spent many years developing ‘place-based’ approaches. This approach involves communities and local services working together to identify their needs. In housing it means putting customers at the forefront of decision-making about their homes; empowering people to act and coordinate investment to improve their quality of life. Essentially, it’s working with a community to implement the changes they want to see.
Jo worked with the Chartered Institute of Housing to shape a national approach to place-making. She also led on a Greater Manchester place-based initiative, leading a team that included police, social care and health and housing workers to deliver a coordinated and completely new way of working. This approach put people at the heart of how services should be delivered. With homes all over Yorkshire we’ve got some areas with a more concentrated number of customers than others. We’ll have a total of 16 ‘place plans’ that group our 160 places under the combined authority areas.
Jo describes her USP as her passion for providing homes - beyond bricks and mortar. She explained why she likes to use the phrase, ‘no home like place. “The idea of subverting the phrase ‘no place like home’ was to help us all move directly to the mindset we need to have – away from sector jargon such as ‘tenants and properties’ to ‘customers and homes’." she said.
Working out what really matters to customers
We need to make it easier for customers to tell us about a problem by removing bureaucracy and complexity, as well as improving how we communicate. We can better understand our customers’ needs by listening to people as well as looking at the data we have. Jo said: “We’re starting with two place plans as a proof of concept. We’ve got loads of data but we’re drilling down into the things that really matter to customers such as getting things right the first time, responding quickly when things go wrong and making it easy for customers to interact with us. We’ll then test that with people and put interventions in place. We’ll also look at strategic priorities working with the local housing partnerships.”
Pre-emptive Vs Reactive
It could be argued that data only takes us so far and, and while Jo acknowledges the importance of numbers and information, we need to make sure that the data paints the right picture. We’ll do this by talking to customers. This coupled with a stronger presence in our places can help us spot any warning signs so that we can intervene early. Put simply, we’re using real data to inform what we do and then we talk directly to customers to help shape what we do next.
We’re investing in smart technology for our homes including installation of temperature and humidity sensors in our homes to help predict damp and mould issues, remote boiler sensors to predict heating system failure and contactless entry systems for our blocks. We’re also making our rents processes automated so we can be proactive and pre-emptive in offering financial support for customers that need it – spotting potential issues around arrears. Having the right tech will help us make sure our customers feel listened to and cared about, with automated business processes and a shift to pre-emptive so we can predict what our customers want and need from us.
Diverse customers – and the challenge
Jo acknowledges the challenge of identifying what customers want. She said; “People want different things in different places. And that’s a serious challenge across the 20,000 homes we own and manage. We see it as the ‘art of the possible.’
“On one hand a customer might want a very personal service with someone calling them to check if they need us, another might want us to leave them be – but be there with the best service when they do need us.
“We know we can’t have one service offer across the variety of housing stock and diversity of customer. Getting this right with the right people, delivering the right services, in the right places is what will make us the best housing provider in the UK.”
It’s important to realise that this is a game-changing shift in our approach - both in terms of our customers’ experience and how our colleagues work. The work to establish success measures, such as integrating our smart home pilots into our technology platforms is new for all of us. So is how we organise and continue to improve our data – using this to personalise services and communications to customers that reflect their diverse and individual needs.
Speaking to customers directly
We’ll know if we’re making it easier for our customers by using a new ‘Customer Effort’ measure. This is a customer survey which scores us on the quality of our service, and notes if we’re easy to contact and do business with. And for our colleagues through our ‘Employee Effort’ - a metric that measures the amount of effort required by employees to complete a task or reach a goal. Both measures are designed to get us reactive-to-proactive-ready.
Jo said: “We work closely with our Customer Voice and Review Committee. They are genuinely interested in how we deliver, and we’ll let them know how we’re getting on.”
So, how do we change our mindset and approach, how does Jo think we’ll manage that?
“Change is always present at Yorkshire Housing. Things don’t stand still. We’re always looking at how we can continuously improve. We need to think ahead so we know what makes a real difference to our customers. The place plan is an ongoing iteration of what that might look like.”