Resident Customers: From Engagement To Empowerment

In any area of business it’s easy to generalise when it comes to customer expectations. There are certainly general needs that apply for all social housing property services resident customers. But meeting universal expectations is the baseline. It’s what you build on top that really defines the customer experience.

Everyone rightly expects to experience convenient and efficient service and easy communications. They want to feel safe in their homes and confident that those homes will be well maintained. They want repairs to be dealt with quickly and with minimum inconvenience.

A property services provider could convince themselves that they were providing a good service by looking at KPI reports related to those factors. But would that mean they were delivering an excellent experience for resident customers? Perhaps not.

Communities and individuals are always different. Resident experience is their experience and their perception. It isn’t just defined by the services that are delivered.

What Does Meaningful Engagement Look Like?

This is why meaningful engagement is so important. Across multiple property services partnerships, it’s fascinating to see the differences and preferences in how services are delivered and how people prefer to communicate with their repair and maintenance service.

In one authority we have a larger than usual proportion of elderly residents. While this makes it easier to book appointments when we know somebody will be at home, it also means that we have to vary operatives’ working hours so that we don’t cut across care services. Operatives also need focused safeguarding and dementia awareness training.

The priorities are obviously very different in a community with predominantly working-age families. Engagement is only meaningful when you are prepared to make changes. Otherwise, it’s just a mix of consultation and informing.

From Engagement to Empowerment

Is there a stage beyond that? We think there is. If the aim is to deliver an exceptional experience for resident customers you need to move to empowerment. This is giving residents an influential voice in decision-making and a key role in service evaluation. This is a brave step, because it’s essentially saying: ‘we don’t always know best and we don’t always have the answers.’

Initiatives like our tenant inspectors put resident customers at the centre of evaluating how effectively we work. Whether this prospect scares or excites you probably says everything about how serious you are about the resident customer experience.

Find out more about Osborne’s unique approach to property services for social housing by visiting our resource centre.

For more information contact Jo Fletcher ([email protected]).