A complaint, or not a complaint, that is the question
Find out more about our complaints process – and what is and what isn’t a complaint
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At Hyde, we’re proud that we give our customers a voice. Part of that is making sure there’s a clear way for you to let us know when you’re not happy with something we’ve done. We sat down with Beth Hawksby, Hyde’s Complaints Team Leader, to find out more about our complaints process.
Over to you Beth:
It’s really important that our complaints service is open and accessible to all our customers. If something’s gone wrong, we want you to feel confident you can tell us. We know that raising a complaint is often because you feel frustrated with something we’ve done. We’re here to listen to what you’ve told us, understand what’s happened and explain clearly what we’ll do next.
Our complaints service is really important to us, which is why we’re continuing to invest in improving it and using your feedback to improve the way we work and services we deliver.
What is a complaint?
A complaint is when you’re unhappy with our service, our actions, or something we haven’t done. For example, if you have to contact us multiple times about a single issue, if you’re unhappy we still haven’t fixed something, or you’re dissatisfied with how we’ve approached a concern you’ve raised, this should be raised as a complaint.
If you let us know that something’s gone wrong, but it’s the first time that we’ve been told about this, we’ll deal with it as a ‘service request’.
This simply means we looked at our policy and it wasn’t classed as a complaint, so we’ll pass it onto the right team to resolve it for you.
If we still don’t deal with the issue properly, or don’t do what we said we would do, you might then raise it as a complaint.
How to make a complaint
If you’re not happy with something we’ve done, please tell us as soon as you can.
The sooner we know, the sooner we can look into it and agree what needs to happen next.
Once we've received your complaint:
- We'll acknowledge your complaint within five working days and a Complaint Officer will contact you
- They’ll speak to you about what’s happened and ask what outcome you’re looking for
- Once they have a good understanding, they’ll investigate your concerns with the relevant colleagues at Hyde and agree the next steps.
This is considered Stage 1 of the complaint process and we aim to provide our full response within ten working days of acknowledging your complaint.
Our response will include:
- How we’ve investigated your concerns
- What we've found
- Whether we got things right or wrong
- What we’ll do next, including any action we’ll take to put things right.
These are our ‘commitments’ and we have a dedicated team to track the progress and ensure we complete within our promised time frames.
Sometimes, we might not always be able to complete those actions before sending the response. For example, we may agree that a repair has taken too long. We’ll then explain what will happen next, even if the repair appointment is still to take place.
We do this so you’re not left waiting for our answer once the investigation is complete. We’ll still follow through on the actions we’ve promised and keep track of them until they’re completed.
If you're still unhappy
If at the end of Stage 1 you’re still unhappy, we’ll advise you of the next steps and timescales.
We have a Stage 2 process, and comply with the Housing Ombudsman’s Complaint Handling Code.
You can find our full complaints policy, including our process here.
When is a complaint not a complaint?
Each week, we receive on average 30 to 50 complaints that aren’t classified as complaints under our policy. We call these ‘service requests’.
Here’s an example:
- You call us to complain about a noisy neighbour. Whilst this is frustrating, our antisocial behaviour teams can help you deal with this, so we’ll support you with reporting this to them. We won’t record or manage this as a complaint.
When does it become a complaint?
If we’re not managing the case well, or we’ve failed to keep in contact with you about it, despite reports you’ve made about antisocial behaviour, then this can become a complaint. This is because we’ve not provided the service we said we would.
Here’s another example of a complaint that is actually a service request:
- You tell us your complaint is that you’re unhappy with the increase in your service charge . We’ll actually raise this as a service charge enquiry, which our Income teams deal with. If there’s been service failure or poor communication relating to this, then it could be considered as a complaint.