The term “customer experience” has been around for quite some time, however technological advancements, Covid-19 and recent events have all changed the way customers interact with businesses, changed their expectations, and the housing and property sector must make sure it is adapting to the fast-changing environment.
The recent ITV investigation into housing conditions, including failings on damp, mould and condensation were, and are, in large part of a failure in customer service, The ramifications of which have included a loss of trust and reputation for the sector, so it is imperative that time and resources are dedicated to the customer’s journey.
Mapping your customer experience
Whilst this may sound like a consumerist concept or the reserve of vast companies with massive marketing resources, it can be a relatively straightforward process suited even to the smallest of companies. It involves looking at where and how your customers can interact with your housing organisation, how easy or difficult it is for them to do this and ways that you can improve this.
For example, how easy is your website to navigate and how easy is it to find key information? Previous wisdom would have suggested a three click rule – that important information should be accessed in three clicks or less, however, more recent thinking would dispute this as a hard and fast rule. Similarly with telephone contact, trends for diverting calls to certain teams “press 1 for finance” can be a double-edged sword if your customer is not sure of their query or it does not fit a box or topic in the list, and some organisations have rowed back on this to the more traditional direct contact with a receptionist who will direct your call as required.
Whatever the current approach, looking at your information sources from an outside perspective will give you valuable insights on your customer’s journey, which leads to the next important trove of customer information…
Seeking your customers opinions
One of the key pitfalls in mapping or making changes to your customer experience is presuming to know what your customer wants, or following trends that may be applied in other areas without checking on the utility of them to your own organisation. Getting meaningful and useful customer feedback can be difficult and time consuming – think about how many emails you have received asking for your review/feedback on a product you have purchased and how many times you have given said review/feedback, this is only one demonstration of the difficulties in gathering feedback.
Often when customers are motivated to give feedback, it is because they have had an extreme experience, either extremely bad or good, and there is a whole lot of data in the middle of the road that organisations are not getting. Looking again at how technology is used to make giving feedback as easy as possible, spending some time and staff resources in reaching customers personally for feedback, and recording and monitoring feedback are just some of the ways to use this valuable resource to improve customer experience.
Complaints
Related to feedback but meriting its own careful attention is another source of customer information that can prove invaluable in improving the customer experience – complaints. Recent strides in the housing sector have sought to ensure complaints are considered as the valuable learning experience that they are, but there is always more that can be done to ensure this data is recorded and responded to.
Complaints occur because your customer is unhappy, pinpointing why this is, what part of your service and process played in this and what you can change to ensure that it does not happen again, is valuable not only in the resolution of the complaint but in your overall service improvement strategy. Be sure not to waste the opportunity that resolving complaints presents.
Technology
Technology has changed most aspects of life in the past few years, and customer service is no exception, think being able to track your Amazon delivery or Uber once you have ordered it.
Such massive investment in technology may not be within the gift of every business or organisation, but careful appraisal of the utility of, and investment in technology, to streamline your customer service and make your customer feel involved, informed and in control, can pay dividends in their perception of your organisation. Bespoke app development can be costly but there is a wide variety of options for off the shelf technologies that help your business respond in a quick and more agile way to your customer’s needs.
Equalities
When contemplating our customer journey, it is important that, whilst organisations cannot foresee all customer needs and expectations, consideration should be given to as wide a range of customers and service users as possible. The Purple Tuesday campaign is a global movement which seeks to increase awareness and accessibility for disabled customers, an economic group that can often feel overlooked and undervalued due to poor customer service experiences.
When mapping your journey, it is important to consider the interactions from as many perspectives as possible including language, disability, literacy, and digital literacy issues to ensure as many customers as possible can access and make use of your services.
Training
Whilst much conversation in the housing and property press recently has focused on mandatory qualifications, this is not a panacea in terms of learning and development, or learning from recent issues and failings. Alongside any mandatory qualifications, we must continue to develop ourselves and our staff teams, and regularly updated customer service training should form part of the annual training calendar. Not least because our customers’ needs and requirements are growing ever more complex as other local services scale back, and it often falls to the housing professional to signpost and support tenants and service users in sustaining their tenancy successfully.
Good customer service training reinvigorates those working in customer service, allows us to step back from the processes, create safe spaces to discuss issues that have arisen, and helps guard against complacency in the provision of services.
Morale
All the above, and what happens on the day when the customer calls, is dependent on the morale of your teams and the culture within your organisation. Housing professionals are dealing with increasingly complex caseloads. In the face of cuts to other services, they often find service users presented with issues that are far more than just housing needs.
Polls have found increases in stress in housing professionals in recent years, and employers therefore must make sure that they are looking after employee wellbeing as a key tenet of our customer service strategy. If wellbeing is central to your people strategy, this will cascade out to your customer experience. Conversely, if employees are stressed, stretched and close to burn out, it is easy to see how mistakes may happen, things get overlooked and complaints and customer failings occur.
Conclusion
Good customer service is essential for all businesses. The current conversation around mandatory learning must not lose sight of the importance of getting customer interactions right, first time. This can only be done when good and useful processes are in place, lessons are learned when things go wrong, and staff are not being asked to “pour from an empty cup.” In customer service, we can always do better – what change would you make today?
