This theme seeks to assess how effective the housing provider is at listening to and empowering its customers.
Great Places understands the importance and value of listening to and using the voice of our customers. We engage with our customers on a variety of topics and by using a codesign approach we look to ensure that we understand what is important to them. Customer feedback is then used to review services and make improvements.
We understand that ‘getting involved’ is a personal choice, and so offer a range of ways customers can be involved, whether they want to answer a one-off question about a very local service or apply to join our Customer Committee alongside Board and Exec Directors. As such we ensure our consultations are engaging, and we’re clear how customers’ feedback has been used to influence our services. To encourage as broad a group of customers as possible are involved in any consultation, we use a range of methods and offer incentives for participation. We use customer information to understand the group we are trying to engage to offer appropriate consultation methods that work best for them, and when communicating feedback.
To further embed the customer voice in shaping and improving our service and customer experience, the past year has also seen the launch of a new Customer Committee. Made up of up of nine members (seven customer members and two non-executive members from the Great Places Board, one of whom acts as Chair), this committee aims to add additional value by providing lived experience and expertise directly from customers within our governance structure to influence the way we do things.
Since January 2024, almost 2000 customers have given their views on three critical business areas; ‘Here for our customers’ corporate priorities, Customer Experience Strategy and our Customer Voice Strategy.
Great Places’ digital customer engagement platform, Our Voice, has also provided us with a valuable additional channel in which to engage with our customers. This has provided additional opportunities for our customers to share valuable input on a variety of topics that can be service specific or local to their area. This helps us to co-design our services and listen to, act on and respond to customer feedback. Recent campaigns we have run include:
We share feedback from consultations with all customers through our communications. Those who participated receive tailored updates on what changes have been made or will be made based on their input. The customer involvement team is now collaborating with various service teams to retest services that have been redesigned or re-procured based on recent feedback.
In 2024 Great Places’ services were assessed by the Regulator of Social Housing who commented:
“Great Places provides a wide range of opportunities for tenants to influence and scrutinise its strategies, policies and services. There are clear arrangements in place through which Great Places hears from tenants. There is also evidence that feedback from tenants has directly and positively impacted service delivery. Great Places has provided appropriate assurance that it makes effective use of its performance data to shape services and provides a range of information to tenants to support effective scrutiny.”
Our ‘Insight’ Customer Scrutiny group was formed in April 2014 and gathers feedback and reviews Great Places’ services regularly. The group is autonomous and free to scrutinise which service areas it feels are a priority and report its findings directly back to our Board. It has completed reviews for a range of areas across the business over the years.
The group engages directly with customers and colleagues, conducting in-depth reviews through surveys, workshops and customer calls. Its findings are communicated via a dedicated page on the Great Places website, complete with informative video presentations. Additionally, Insight keeps our customers informed through regular monthly e-newsletters and our customer magazine, ‘My Great Place,’ which is now published three times a year.
In addition to meetings, customers can support scrutiny reviews by completing tasks from home, taking part in guided visits to observe or provide feedback about their experience of a service. A dedicated scrutiny page is also planned for the Our Voice platform. Customers will find detail of upcoming scrutiny topics, be able to suggest ideas for future scrutiny, or provide feedback on a service transaction, which will inform scrutiny reviews. The Our Voice page also sets out outcomes following a scrutiny review. Insight receives an update from colleagues in the business six months after a scrutiny review, so they can monitor progress against the action plan and see how this is supporting a better service for customers.
Between April 2023 and March 2024, Insight has reviewed the following services:
Bev (South region)
“Being involved in the scrutiny process is really rewarding as we’re involved from selection of a service to review, to the completion of any recommendations, and we suggest how using our findings might improve customer satisfaction.” “Service colleagues return to update us of changes made and the hopeful effectiveness of them. It remains a collaborative endeavour. If they are able to devise different, better ways to deliver a function, that’s a welcome option to consider. By updating to us, it offers the chance to debate about options and feasibility. Making changes on a semi-formal basis maintains a recorded timeline with notes about prompts, methods and reasoning. Any information to reference is always helpful.” “The flexibility and joint suggestions assist in creating an exercise to be proud of.”
Sylvia (North region)
“I have been involved with the Insight group for six years. It’s great to be part of a team of customers whose role it is to be a critical friend to Great Places and be part of the customer voice to help improve service delivery, through our various organisational reviews. It has been very interesting to learn of the various aspects required to run a housing association in the North West. It is always good to know that the Trustee Board members not only value our input, but also listens to Great Places’ customers.”
Ruth (South region)
“I help with scrutiny because I don’t want to waste all the knowledge and experience after retiring from a lifetime of working. Being involved enables me in some small way to be a voice for other customers and help shape and improve the service overall.”
Stephen (South region)
“Having worked as an Insight member for some years, I find it very interesting, worthwhile and satisfying. It’s all about taking a questioning and critical look at services for customers, and then being positive and precise in our feedback to Great places. “We’re able to influence beneficial changes - we know this because we have scheduled feedback from the service teams we examine. For example, after examining the management of communal spaces, we recommended that the service look to make better use of a mobile digital technology system to improve services. As a result, real improvements are taking place, and we are updated from time to time about progress.”
