Enjoying fair and flexible access to services

Customer satisfaction has increased – we achieved 82.8% customer satisfaction against a target of 82%. This is measured through your feedback on our contact with you, repairs and complaints.

 

But we’re not stopping there. We want to make it as easy as possible for you to access our services and to help us achieve this, we’ve introduced a new performance measure.

We now ask you to rate us on how easy we are to deal with, where a low score means really easy and a high one means we need to improve.

This year we scored better than forecast, achieving 4.6 out of 10, against a target of 5.2. We’ve set a target of 4.5 for the next year.

As a housing provider that reinvests all our profits into our homes and services, we’re committed to being transparent about how we receive and spend our money. We want to give you a clear breakdown of how we spend our income. You can expect to see this in next year’s report and eventually we hope to be able to give you performance information on a more regular basis.

99% of our service charge estimates were accurate first-time, giving you peace of mind. We always strive for 100% and since 2018 we’ve achieved 99% each year.  This year, we’re exploring how we can make our service charge booklets even clearer for you.


It’s also important to us that our services offer good value for money and wherever possible we consult with you to achieve this. Over the last year, your feedback helped to shape our new cleaning and maintenance contracts, including how often you want to receive the services, the cost you’re willing to pay and what you expect to be included.

Thank you to our Care & Support teams

Perhaps the area that experienced the biggest impact of the pandemic was our Care & Support services. We delivered restaurant meals to our customers’ homes when our communal restaurants had to close. We organised tablets for our customers so they could keep in touch with friends and family despite being locked down, and we set up wellbeing walks and online craft sessions for our younger customers in supported housing.

We’re so grateful for all the thank yous and donations of food we received across the year and would like to add our own thanks to our teams for all their hard work and kindness.

Sadly, home is not a safe place for everyone. During 2020, we received over 6,000 calls to our domestic abuse services in Oxford and West Berkshire. This service plays a vital, sometimes lifesaving role in supporting victims of domestic abuse. We provided ongoing support for 1,757 victims of domestic abuse throughout the year.

If things go wrong, we put them right

Although we want to provide a high-quality service, we don’t always get it right. Over the last year we’ve focused on learning from the complaints we receive to help us resolve the issue and prevent it happening again. In 2020 we delivered ‘Customer First’ training across our Customer Experience teams. We now plan for all operational teams, including our Pyramid Plus contractors to receive the training. It focuses on how to listen to you; to engage effectively and respond in a way that addresses all your concerns.



Last year 84% of those making a complaint said that they were satisfied with the way we listened, understood and resolved their issues, compared with 86% the year before. We're working hard to improve on this in 2021/22; our priorities are to speed up how quickly we respond to you when you’re unhappy with our service and to work with you to make sure you’re fully satisfied with the outcome.