We all have a duty of care to our customers and their families - this means putting things right before they go wrong and delivering on our promises. We’re ambitious to create services and experiences that make the quality of our customers’ lives better.
At Abri, customer satisfaction is the responsibility of everyone, not just the teams who work in customer-facing roles. You might wonder what this looks like in reality. In an everyday setting, this involves working with our customers and colleagues to make improvements by using their voices to shape and deliver a great customer experience, one way we do this is through See Something Say Something (SSSS).
See Something Say Something is an internal reporting tool that encourage Abri colleagues to raise concerns on things that may need attention in our neighbourhoods or in customers’ homes. This could be anything from overgrown grass in an area we maintain to a damaged communal door - think of it as an extra measure that goes above and beyond to meet the needs of customers. Colleagues can simply report an issue they’ve come across by filling out and submitting a short survey.
Getting everyone onboard from day one
The Damp, Mould and Disrepair team have taken the lead on making SSSS a part of the organisational culture at Abri. Building the campaign from scratch involved working closely and sharing the greater vision with teams like IT, HR, Customer Services, Governance and our colleagues in repairs and maintenance. To truly make SSSS a part of Abri’s DNA, e-learning dedicated to the campaign was created and made accessible to all colleagues; empowering them to make a 360 visual observation when they visit customers in their homes or communities.
The online training is there to give them the extra boost and confidence to trust their instinct and use the reporting tool when something doesn’t feel right. So, if one of our Housing Partners visit a customer at home in relation to an anti-social behaviour concern, they should feel confident in reporting something like damp and mould if it’s spotted whilst they’re there. This concern is then added to the radar of the Damp, Mould and Disrepair team who schedule a survey and repair job that makes our customer’s home safer and more secure.
The Leaders and Communications team at Abri have also been instrumental in getting the message out to colleagues across the organisation; reinforcing the importance of keeping our homes to a high standard. Since its launch, SSSS has received and processed over 1,000 reports from colleagues – providing us with an opportunity to intervene earlier to prevent worse case scenarios for customers.
Why a campaign like See Something Say Something matters
The housing sector was recently rocked by the tragic case of Awaab Ishak, a toddler who died from a respiratory condition caused by exposure to mould in his home. Sadly, this case was a critical reminder that if left untreated, damp and mould can cause serious health issues or lead to fatality when it’s not addressed over a period of time. At Abri, reports of damp and mould in customers’ homes often do increase in the colder months, but it’s important to remember that these conditions can also be found in homes during warmer seasons if they’re poorly ventilated.
There certainly are lessons to be learnt across the housing sector following this tragic case. We recognise that there’s room for improvement in our service delivery, our customers deserve nothing less than a seamless experience from beginning to end, so we’re working on changing it for the better to prevent cases like this.
Investing into tackling damp and mould
The health and wellbeing of our customers is a top priority, their needs are front and centre. To adjust our services to better respond to their needs and reduce the adverse impact that severe damp and mould can have on their lives, we’re investing £3 million into damp and mould this financial year.
We realise that our investment isn’t an overnight remedy that’ll resolve historical damp and mould conditions but to reduce further and future risk of these conditions in customers’ homes, we have to start somewhere. At a quick glance, here are some of the changes we’ve made to improve our services:
- Overhauled our approach, processes and policies regarding damp and mould, including having a robust Damp, Mould and Disrepair team in place
- Trained and empowered colleagues to recognise and address the signs of damp and mould in customers’ homes
- Adjusted our Customer Relations team structure to better assess complaints and to carry out effective complaint handling, including introducing temporary support to accelerate the speed of complaint response times
- Introduced ‘local resolutions’ to empower more customer-facing teams to resolve customer enquiries at first point of contact
Overcoming challenges to make See Something Say Something a success
SSSS has been successful in identifying and tackling concerns sooner rather than later. Owning it openly, carrying out a campaign like this did come with its challenges – one being finding the best way to navigate the data submitted by colleagues.
The campaign was powerful in capturing lots of information, but the backend functions of the reporting tool needed some fine tuning to ensure that the data we captured was processed in the right way. To do this, we enlisted the support of our IT colleagues who set up tracking and tracing for the data received. This made life easier to action repairs more efficiently. IT even added a sophisticated function that provided direct feedback to the individual who initially raised the concern – reassuring them that their raised report was all in hand.
The planning of the campaign highlighted that to carry out an operation like this, it’s likely that you’ll need support such as additional resources to help meet the higher demand. By outlining this need before launching the campaign, we were able to get a head start in upskilling our workforce and increasing our damp mould and disrepair team by 76% to meet the new demand for repair works. Investing into the learning and development of our workforce gave colleagues the tools to feel empowered. This was also a great strategy for becoming more self-sufficient in completing scheduled works; allowing us to plan ahead and be less reliant on support from contractors.
Our greater vision for the future of customer experiences at Abri
Abri is committed to being Top 10 in our sector for customer satisfaction and SSSS plays a key role on our voyage to reaching this. Our winning formula for this includes the basic building blocks of customer satisfaction – a safe and well-maintained home, backed up with a highly effective repairs service. This is then combined with good communication and knowledgeable people who are empowered to make decisions with customers in mind.
So, if you’re a customer who would like a second opinion on potential signs of damp and mould in your home, or you might be a colleague whose seen something that doesn’t feel right, let us know so we can change that for you.
Anna Nicholls
Head of Repairs