Our plans for 2024/25

The next financial year brings with it more opportunity for growth within the complaints service and all other services we offer our customers. We are excited for the upcoming changes already planned which will make a significant difference to improving services and sharing these improvements with both internal and external stakeholders. Below we have detailed the plans and targets we have set for the coming year. 

Restructure of the Customer and Transformation Service  

For the last year our new Executive Directors have been observing the roles and functions within mhs and have been planning and preparing for a restructure. This will include the Business Improvement Team, the Customer Experience Team and the Customer Team. Whilst details of the restructure are being finalised for consultation with affected colleagues, we can share that this restructure will help improve our customer service functions and the framework to which they operate.

Introduction of quality assurance checks  

A quality matrix has been created to assess every complaint response against a select criterion chosen to meet the Housing Ombudsman Complaint Handling Code as well as any internal complaints training. From April 1st, 2024, we will be marking 100% of all responses to improve our quality of responses and customer journey with the complaints process, as well as reduce escalations to stage two or the Housing Ombudsman.

Re-build of the complaints system  

In 2023-24 our ICT teams worked on a significant project of moving our housing records from Open Housing to One Housing. Now One Housing has been successfully completed, the ICT team have been asked to prioritise updating the complaints functions. This means our newest complaints process will be updated in the system, allowing us to track not only volumes of complaints but everything from types of remedies and types of complaint categories. This will allow us to report in more detail and target key trend areas for improvement.

Improving visibility that we listen  

Many of our customers have been contacted to complete a tenant satisfaction measure survey throughout the last year. The results of those surveys showed that 54% of customers feel we listen to their views and act upon them. We recognise that we need to do more to share our improvements with our customers, so they can see we have listened and making changes to how we work. Our Communications Team will be sharing more examples in our quarterly customer newsletter as well as other channels.

Training: Allstars

Our training team have launched Allstars training modules for mhs employees to attend throughout 2024-25. These modules have been carefully created from feedback from the business, including trends in what we have learnt from complaints in 2023-24. The first collaborative session was well received and highlighted to staff the importance of communication and empathy in different scenarios. The upcoming modules throughout the year include: Communication, Empathy & Understanding, Responding to Individual Needs.

Training system upgrade  

We have been working on delivering a new training platform for all colleagues. For complaints, this will allow us to allocate modules and set training to different groups. For example, complaint handlers will be enrolled on complaint handler training, whereas all staff will have to complete training on their duty to report complaints to the Customer Experience Team.

Complaints Audits and Reviews  

Our Customer Scrutiny Panel will be completing a review of the complaints service, focusing on the customer journey. Alongside this an internal audit of the complaints service will be completed, focusing more on the systems and behind the scenes functions. These reviews will help us to identify where we can improve and shape our service to help our customers more.

New system for capturing what we have learnt  

We are creating a new platform to record and monitor any learnings from complaints through to completion. This will allow us to report what we have learnt in more detail, to also aid the visibility of improvements. Whilst this is initially a project from complaints, we have wider plans to track all types of lessons, whether that be from a health and safety report, a disrepair claim, or a colleague having an idea whilst doing their job!

Increasing customer engagement  

Customer engagement with the complaints process is going to be one of the key targets in 2024-25. We have plans to set up a complaint focus group consisting of customers that can offer us their insights into the customer experience when going through the complaint process. These will help shape the complaints process and policy to strength satisfaction with complaints. We are also looking to use our complaint data to offer workshops with customers that have joint trends in complaints, so we can learn more about what we can do to improve key complaint trends.  

New complaint form on the mhs website  

In 2023-24 a new form was created for our website that gathered more details about the complaint to allow for a quicker investigation and joint understanding of the issues. We arranged for a customer engagement group to review the form, however this needed to be re-arranged due to a test system error which meant the form had to be rebuilt. We are looking to complete the engagement in Q1 and release the form after any amendments are made.

New Remedies Policy   

The Compensation Policy is going through a major review which will mirror the Housing Ombudsman’s remedy guidance, rather than just focus on a financial remedy. Alongside this we will be introducing a discretionary payment matrix to help complaint handlers in offering the correct amount to customers and maintain continuity across all complaints.

Completion of all Housing Ombudsman Spotlight Reviews  

Meetings have been arranged with our Leadership team between June 2024 – September 2024, to review all of the spotlight reports. Currently each spotlight report has been given to a lead within our management or leadership teams, to consider the report and the recommendations within it. The outcomes of these will also help drive further service improvements and will be included within 2024-25’s annual service improvement report.

Introduction of a transactional complaint survey  

Linking with our customer engagement target, we will be introducing a new customer transactional survey for complaints to understand more about our true satisfaction with complaints. Our current tenant satisfaction survey asks customers if they have had a complaint in the last 12 months, and if answered yes, how satisfied they were. Our data shows that around 70% of the customers that answer this question as ‘yes’, have not actually raised a complaint with us. This means the results of that answer do not give us a true understanding of complaint satisfaction.

A review of the stage two and Housing Ombudsman customer journey  

We are looking to review our stage two complaint process with an aim of reducing the number of complaints that escalate to stage two and increasing our customer engagement with the complaints process. Alongside this, we will be looking at how to improve our contact and relationship with customers whilst and investigation is ongoing.