One Vision Housing's 'Good Neighbours' help shape future home improvements » Housing » 24dash.com

One Vision Housing tenants enjoying recent major home improvements have been given the opportunity to be the ultimate good neighbours by helping to shape future Decent Homes works across Sefton.

A group of seven One Vision Housing (OVH) tenants whose homes had recently been improved as part of the Decent Homes programme were invited to join staff from OVH and Connaught Partnerships Ltd at the Park Hotel on Dunningsbridge Road to discuss their experiences of the scheme.

As part of the exercise the customer journey was mapped from start to finish to help identify ways in which the consultation and aftercare process could be improved and once potential weak spots had been identified, the Connaught customer experience team role-played the new consultation process back to customers to ensure any potential obstacles had been overcome.

Claire Kershaw, Connaught customer experience manager, explained: “We are always looking for ways to improve our customers’ experience and our satisfaction returns show that while tenants are delighted with their finished kitchen and bathroom, the communication process throughout the works could be improved.

“This event was the first process in establishing what practical measures we could take to address this and it was really positive, with our customers having excellent ideas which we have used to revise the way we work to serve them better. We are currently training all our customer service team to use the new methods and will monitor improvements in satisfaction and feed these back to tenants. Afterall who better is there to ask how we are performing than our customers themselves?!”

One Vision Housing tenant Jean Grant said of the event: “I didn’t have any idea what to expect prior to the event, but I found it really interesting. The Connaught staff were friendly whilst being open and prepared not only to listen to suggestions and comments, but to also act upon them.

“Overall the event was highly enjoyable and will hopefully prove beneficial in further improving the service to other One Vision Housing tenants.”

OVH Customer Relationship Manager Rachel Gore said: “It was great to gauge tenants’ feedback on the decent homes work. We received a lot of useful information from those who attended which we can now use to improve our service further in the future.”

One Vision Housing and Connaught are working in partnership to deliver kitchen, bathroom, full heating system, externals, structural and windows & doors improvements as part of a five year Decent Homes contract due for completion in 2011.