Every complaint gives us valuable insight into what’s working well, where customers are experiencing challenges, and what we need to do differently. By listening and acting on what we learn, we’re making changes that improve the experience for our customers.
Here are some of the key improvements we’ve made during the first quarter of the year.
Improving communication and follow through
Several complaint themes highlighted the importance of keeping customers informed and delivering on the commitments we make.
Following a recent case where a customer needed specific adjustments to how we communicate with them, we've introduced a system change that automatically shares communication preferences with our external contractors. This helps ensure customers' individual needs are recognised when we pass work to contractors.
We've also strengthened our complaint aftercare processes after identifying cases where agreed actions hadn't always been completed following a Stage 1 complaint response. Regular reviews now help teams track actions through to completion and improve accountability.
Learning from complaints about the impact of lift breakdowns, door entry system failures and other communal service outages, we're reviewing how we communicate with affected customers during disruption. This includes looking closely at customer feedback and complaint themes, so we can develop clearer standards and provide more consistent, proactive updates when outages happen.
Helping teams learn from complaint trends
Complaint themes have highlighted clear lessons around keeping customers informed, keeping promises and maintaining accurate records.
We've been sharing these lessons across our services and rolling out training to help managers access and analyse complaints data more effectively. This helps teams identify themes, learn from customer experiences and act more quickly to prevent similar issues happening again.
Giving customers a stronger voice
Feedback from complaints and customer experiences has shown us how important it is to involve customers more directly in shaping our complaints service.
That's why we established our Complaints Customer Panel, which met formally for the first time in June. The panel will give customers a stronger voice in our complaints journey, helping us test ideas, shape future improvements and make sure customer experience plays a bigger role in how we design and deliver our service.
Responding to customer feedback
Customer feedback in our London region highlighted concerns about heating and hot water repairs.
In response, we've taken the decision to bring these services in-house rather than continue using an external contractor. While it will take time for the full benefits to be realised, the change has been made directly in response to customer feedback and is intended to improve service quality and reduce future complaints.
Keeping our approach fair and in line with regulation
We’ve also updated our redress guidance to reflect changes made by the Housing Ombudsman to its Compensation Guidance.
This helps us keep our approach clear, fair and consistent, while making sure our decisions are aligned with the Ombudsman’s expectations and the regulations we need to follow.
“We know that making a complaint isn't something any customer wants to do. When concerns are raised, it's important that we listen, act and learn from the experience. The improvements we've made this quarter are a direct result of customer feedback, and we're committed to using those insights to make our services better, improve communication and get things right more often first time."
Katie Travis
Head of Complaints at Abri
Making a complaint or getting involved
If you've already raised an issue with us and feel it hasn't been put right, you can make a formal complaint. You can email us at hello@abri.co.uk or call our Customer Contact Team on 0300 123 1567. We also offer a range of other ways to make a complaint, so you can choose the option that works best for you. Find all the options here.
And if you're interested in becoming a member of the complaints panel, or getting involved in one of our other panels, simply complete this form and the Resident Involvement team will be in touch.