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How Do Social Housing Residents Judge Their Repair and Maintenance Service?

When it comes to judging a repairs and maintenance service, residents may have a different frame of reference compared to social housing landlords and contractors. We might assess our performance against contract specifications and industry benchmarks; residents are more likely to compare it to online services or other household service repairs such as white good repairs.

Customer expectations for the speed and convenience of services they use are always increasing. The advent of the internet and smartphones has created a new perception of how people want to interact with service providers. Instant access and digitally enabled business models have transformed how customer service works.

Customer Experience

When mobilising a new repairs and maintenance service, one of our biggest priorities from the outset is to understand how residents would prefer to interact with the service. We want to understand what a good customer experience looks like to them. There’s little value in a service that hits all our targets but doesn’t deliver what residents expect.

As with other sectors, IT is the key – so long as it is configured to meet real user needs. Osborne Property Services has invested heavily in IT to develop In Touch. This is a fully integrated system that combines a range of specialist technologies into a flexible and easily configurable contact and tracking system.

Residents can use an app or browser to report a fault – we even list the ten most common repairs to make selection easier. They can then book a two-hour repair slot with a few clicks. They can do this any time of day or night without needing to phone a call centre.

Behind the scenes In Touch provides a workflow management system for repairs, voids, gas, compliance and planned works. For our landlord customers,there is complete transparency – they have access to exactly the same performance data as we do, in line with our ‘open book’ approach.

Technology is the cornerstone of how we are driving up standards in customer service. It’s also instrumental in delivering process efficiencies, a more holistic approach to asset management and long-term savings for reinvestment.

Vickie Stevenson, Head of ICT/Applications – Osborne Property Services

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