Customer Service and Right First Time: More Than Words

‘Right first time’ has become a bit of a cliché across many business sectors – and housing repair and maintenance is no exception. It’s an aspiration every repair and maintenance contractor would be expected to talk about. For social housing residents, of course, it’s about more than words. Every time the reality fails to live up to the promise, it means inconvenience and frustration.

Delivering right-first-time performance comes from having a customer-centric ethos. It doesn’t happen just by telling people how important it is. Behavioural change is needed, which demands a systematic approach. This has to be backed by training so that teams are equipped with the skills they need to build a positive culture.

Because putting customers first is so fundamental to our business, Osborne Property Services makes a significant investment in training its people to be more customer focused. Within the first three months of any new repair and maintenance contract, members of our team undergo a customer-focused training programme with the Institute of Customer Service. As a result, they become accredited to cascade ICS ‘First Impressions’ training throughout the organisation, so that everyone has a shared understanding and a shared approach to maintaining excellent standards of customer care.

Understanding of Excellence

First Impressions training uses real-life examples to explore the customer journey so that each individual can see where their role fits in, as well as providing a greater understanding to how their actions could have knock-on effects that lead to either a positive or negative experience.

As you’d expect, communication skills are at the core of customer service excellence. The training stresses to contract teams and supply chain partners how critical consistent communication is both with our residents and our colleagues.  Fostering positive relationships can make the difference of great or bad service.

A customer-first ethos isn’t a one-time fix. Throughout the contract, refresher training reinforces positive behaviours and creating a culture of capturing ideas for service improvements all form part of our customer-handling process. When customer-first is the normal way of working, right-first-time forms organically.

Claudette Gough, Regional Customer Experience Manager – Osborne Property Services