Posted on 14 December 2023
We’re continuing to work with our customers to improve their homes and services
"Our Annual review for customers (PDF, 3MB), published 14 December 2023, shows how we’re listening customers and putting their needs first,” said CEO Andy Hulme.
“Customers have told us they want easier and quicker services, clear information about service charges, to be mindful of customers’ needs and to provide help when they need it.
“We’re making sure our plans cover these things. For example, in direct response to customers’ feedback, we’re creating smaller ‘neighbourhoods’, served by local teams. This means we can communicate better and more regularly with customers, can be clear about who’s responsible for resolving problems, and be more visible in our communities.”
Andy continued: “We believe customers should have a voice at the highest levels of Hyde. That’s why we ask customers to serve on our Group Housing Services Committee and on our Group Board. These customers make sure we provide a good service, by scrutinising the quality of our services and by helping to shape our plans for the future.
“We’ve recruited new volunteers to our involved customer group, Customer Voice, with 11 tenants, leaseholders and shared owners meeting regularly to coordinate customer involvement activities.”
Improving complaints handling
Improving the way we handle customers’ complaints was also very important, Andy added.
“We streamlined our complaints process last year, making it easier for customers to report an issue, so we can solve problems faster. We now have just one process and every complaint is handled in the same way.
”We hired more complaints handling colleagues and teams have had additional training, so they handle complaints better, faster and with a focus on keeping customers informed and updated on the progress of complaints. We’ve also made it easier to track complaints, through our online customer portal, MyAccount.”
These changes saw customer satisfaction with complaint handling increase from 47% in 2021/22 to 54% last year. Additionally, 72% of customers told us they find it easy to communicate with our Complaints team. The time it took us to respond to a complaint fell from an average of 43.4 days in 2021/22 to 33.5 days last year.
“It’s been a challenging year for our customers, our sector and for Hyde,” Andy said. “However, we’ve made a conscious decision to focus on supporting our customers. As a charitable organisation, all of the money we receive is reinvested in improving our services and our homes.
“We realise we’ve still got a long way to go. But we’re doing the right things for our customers, and that will always be the key measure of our success.”
Download our Annual review for customers 2022-23 (PDF, 3MB).