Updated quarterly, this data aims to give an insight into how well CDS delivers services to its residents, which areas we’re aiming to improve and how we plan to do this. It looks only at CDS housing, and not at the independent cooperatives we support.
October-December 2020
Repairs Performance
We understand how important it is to our residents to get their repairs done as quickly as possible. Although performance remained largely stable for repair completion times for routine and urgent jobs, there was an increase in the percent of emergency jobs that took too long to complete between October and December. The main reason for this was that it was difficult for contractors to keep up with the increased volume of emergency repairs that occurred during the second lockdown in November. We also struggled to get contractors to attend emergency repairs in late December, as several of them experienced staff who were out sick with the virus.
Starting in April 2021, we will be introducing a new way to manage repairs, using a platform called Plentific. This will mean you will likely see new contractors on the estate carrying out repairs. Since June 2020, we have been using Plentific at our largest estate, Phoenix. When compared to our traditional service across the rest of our stock, jobs managed through Plentific were completed faster, cost less and residents were more satisfied. We are excited to expand this way of managing repairs to all CDS properties!
Complaints Performance
Since the 1st of April, we have responded to 28 first-stage complaints. Of those, two received late responses. The responses were sent one day late because of a glitch in our housing management system, which generated an incorrect response due date. This happened once at the end of September and once at the beginning of October. We are now checking the generated dates to ensure they are correct.
We review upheld responses to learn from them and improve. The learning from last quarter is that we need to be easier to contact and improve our reliability to keep our commitments. We are seeking a way to record phone calls whilst working from home so we can monitor the quality of customer service we provide and ensure we are logging all commitments on our housing management system.
Overall Customer Satisfaction
We survey our residents quarterly about how satisfied they are with the service we provide. The image below represents the results we received from tenants in our December 2020 survey.
80% of our tenants were satisfied with the overall service they receive. They gave us the highest ratings for value for money of rent (90%) and feeling their property is safe and secure (82%). Residents are least satisfied that we listen to their views and act on them (49%) and value for money of the service charge (63%).
Our primary areas of focus are on improving satisfaction with our repairs service and involving residents in decisions that affect them. We are confident the use of Plentific from April as a way to manage repairs will lead to notable improvements in satisfaction with our repairs service. We are also exploring ways to meaningfully collaborate with our residents on all facets of the service they receive.
Customer Satisfaction – Key Areas
