Accent's new repairs satisfaction service is 'a good call'

Published by Heather Jacklin for Accent Group in Housing

Shipley based Accent Foundation has used Call-2-Survey from The Housing Contact Company to improve poor response rates to repairs satisfaction surveys.

In the past, Accent produced questionnaires to collect responses, but only a few residents returned them, making it difficult for the association to get meaningful data.

Accent's repairs satisfaction feedback service now starts with a simple, automatic phone call, on just after the day the repair is completed. The outcome of the call is logged and the information gives Accent valuable business intelligence to help it manage the performance of its repairs contractors and instant feedback on what residents think about the association and its repairs service.

Accent Repairs Manager Andrew Kidds said: “We had two temporary staff members dedicated to outbound calls to get us from an 8% response rate up to something more reasonable. We managed to get to an average rate of around 14%, but at a cost and the feedback didn’t change much. We were always dealing with dated information and challenged regularly that the volume wasn’t representative”.

“I was a little bit of a skeptic of the service at first but, based on the success achieved with a UK automotive industry version, I was prepared to give it a go. I wanted a broader, more representative view of our performance, but I also needed feedback that enabled us to do something proactive within our operations.”

Accent residents are very positive about the new service and response rates immediately increased to around 20%, steadying at 30% a couple of months later.  Next, Accent plans to include customer profiling data to trigger surveys in other languages, which will grow the response rate even further.

The new service has enabled Accent to make savings in resource cost and reduce inbound call volumes to achieve further efficiencies. The association's contractors can access up to date performance results, enabling them to share a common result.

For more information contact Andrew Kidds on andrew.kidds@accentgroup.org or 07824 521068.