Customer Satisfaction Surveys – What are they good for? Lorna shaw, director Research resource

The large scale customer satisfaction survey The Regulator asks you to carry out regular surveys with tenants and service users: Allows the SHR to monitor and assess landlords’ performance against the Charter Provides tenants and service users with robust, reliable, high quality information about the range of services provided by landlords Help in an assessment of whether landlords are achieving the standard of outcomes required by the Charter To be able to compare performance of landlords by having identical data from each Plan regulatory activity as a result of the performance data received from landlords Use information from indicators to look more closely at aspects of a landlord’s performance

Customer compliments, comments and complaints Your most unhappy customers are your greatest source of learning. Bill Gates Listening to customers is just the first step, you need a way to measure and monitor Customer comments can be helpful but there are not easy to quantify Your most vocal customers are often the most or least satisfied – how do you tap into the silent majority?

Continuous satisfaction monitoring, continuous improvement…… We all need people who will give us feedback. That’s how we improve. Bill Gates What gets measured gets done. Tom Peters

How can you develop a customer satisfaction framework? Identify the areas where customers interact with you Map the customer journey What are the key points of these services which you wish to monitor?

The survey A sample of customers who have interacted/ transacted with you on a monthly or quarterly basis The survey can assess customer satisfaction with: - Customer care/ contact - Aspects of service provided - Response/ outcome Identification of potential points of dissatisfaction or outstanding issues

Making it work Agree protocols for customer contact, and minimise survey fatigue Provide timely feedback and follow up where there are outstanding issues Over time, trends can be evidenced and improvement actions evaluated

Continuous customer satisfaction monitoring… Can you give me a brief quote about the importance or impact of the ongoing customer satisfaction work that we do for you for you…?

Clydesdale Housing Association Identify problems with service delivery at an early stage – e.g. from previous annual TSS work we know that prompt tenant contact from contractors and turning up on time to carry works out are understandably highly valued stages in delivering a quality service. Monitoring this and discussing tenant feedback at monthly contractor meetings enables us to nip problems in the bud and avoid longer term service quality deterioration. We use the detailed comments provided to contact tenants directly (where they give Research Resource (RR) permission to pass on their details) and follow up on specific issues they have mentioned. Tenants are sometimes reluctant to complain to us direct, maybe because they don’t want to get someone into trouble. RR gathering these comments can act as a good intermediary that tenants feel they can talk to and it gets issues dealt with. Monitoring tenant satisfaction is a key performance indicator that our committee/board look for each month as part of our balanced scorecard approach to performance monitoring (it considers financial, process and innovative areas of performance along with customer feedback in order to get a ‘balanced’ picture of how we are doing. Our Committee take the responsibility of achieving good outcomes for service users very seriously and gathering ongoing customer feedback is a key piece of evidence in this.

Clyde Valley Group The Clyde Valley Group aims to provide customers with a high quality service and customer experience at all times.  We set ourselves high standards, welcome feedback and continually ask for feedback from our customers about all aspects of their dealings with our contractors and us. This feedback is used to continually improve our service. In order to assess our customer care performance and identify areas where we can improve, we have to be able to measure what is being achieved. We do this primarily with monthly independent satisfaction surveys and complaints monitoring. There are two main reasons for measuring standards of customer care: • To let all customers know how we are performing. • To identify areas where we may be falling short and take action to remedy these. The Clyde Valley Group gives all of its customers an absolute undertaking that it will accurately assess all of the information gathered and include true details on performance in our newsletters on an annual basis. Monthly independent satisfaction surveys are  invaluable and  allow us to do this and also enable us to advise where any resultant changes or improvements have been  made that are linked to customer views.

To conclude…. Excellent firms don’t believe in excellence – only in constant improvement and constant change. Tom Peters

Any questions?

Contact information Please do not hesitate to contact us if you would like to discuss any research needs. Lorna Shaw, Director 0141 641 6410  / 07711 418864 (Mobile) Research Resource, 17B Main Street, Cambuslang, G72 7EX lorna.shaw@researchresource.co.uk Research Resource is the trading name of Research Resource Scotland Limited, a private limited company (Company no: 369072) VAT Registration: 984 5317 85