How to Change Your Repair and Maintenance Experience
It’s not unusual for residents in social housing to be unhappy with their repair and maintenance (R&M) service. You don’t have to search far to find local press reports where residents complain of substandard quality, unfinished work and poor service.
Naturally, problems tend to make better news copy than success stories. But research commissioned by Shelter suggests that many residents are not happy, with some having to report faults over 10 times.
If the repair and maintenance service isn’t working well, what do you do? Options include finding another partner and bringing the service in-house. But how can you be sure that residents’ experiences will be any different? Will swapping one organisation delivering a range of services for another organisation delivering a range of services make any difference? Possibly not.
What Needs to Change?
The first step for any new R&M partner should be pinpointing exactly what needs to change, rather than learning ‘how things are done.’ These priorities have to be seen from the perspective of residents and the customer, rather than the service provider.
This calls for structured conversations and customer journey mapping to tease out the details that define a service that people will value.
R&M partners also have to be flexible. Contracts are usually long-term and it’s not possible to know everything at the start of the relationship. Priorities are sometimes driven by external events and residents’ expectations may change over time.
Social housing landlords can change the perceptions of their residents through service improvements and positive interactions. As a major customer-facing presence, their repair and maintenance plays a critical role in achieving this. They need a partner that can listen, learn and adapt. One that doesn’t assume that ‘how things are done’ is always how they should be done.
A Different Approach
Osborne is experienced in using customer journey mapping to understand how residents prefer to interact with the service. Because we are a customer-focused learning organisation we don’t seek to simply transplant ‘our way of working’ onto each new partnership.
We take the time to understand what people value. We also use processes such as our Improvement Opportunities App to capture thousands of ideas every year for how our service delivery can be improved. Listening and learning are major priorities right across our organisation and the overwhelmingly positive feedback from residents about their experience suggests we are getting it right.
