Knowing me, Knowing you… getting to know your customers
Speaker(s):
Andrew Gray, Managing Director, Consult CIH Ltd.
Margaret Torrance, Director, Paragon Housing Association
Andrew Gray controversially
claimed that housing associations could learn how to put
customers at the heart of their business from companies
such as Tesco.
He described the CIH briefing on Customer Insight can
be used to turn the knowledge about customers’ behaviours,
needs and aspirations into tangible outcomes.He explained
that the demand to deliver services more efficiently is
increasing pressure on social landlords to deliver more
tailored and personalised services. This means that increasing
numbers of public service and housing organisations are
adopting customer insight processes as a tool to developing
customer focused services and reduce waste.
He said that while housing associations have been excellent
at collecting data they have often failed to use the information
about their customers to improve the services that they
provide. He also said that RSLs often fail to tell their
customers about service improvements that are implemented
after customer consultation.
Margaret confessed that Paragon Housing Association had
been guilty in the past of taking a knee-jerk response
to customer feed back. However they are now taking a more
strategic approach to analysing customer feedback as it
is important to realise that there is often a difference
between what people say they want and what people actually
do.
She said that Paragon is using a range of methods to gather
information about their current and potential tenants.
They conduct surveys, hold focus groups and are hosting
a tenant consultation day in conjunction with another
association and a local authority. This should allow the
three organisations to compare results about different
customer groups and different ways of delivering services.
She revealed how having clear evidence of local residents’
views not only gave direction to the project it also helped
unlock the resources needed to turn round a low demand
estate in Alloa. This empowered the association to make
changes to the stock and layout of the estate.
