As part of our commitment to service improvement, we monitor the complaints we have received and our performance in responding to those complaints. We also review why customers are complaining and make changes to reduce the chances of us making the same mistakes again.
We received 75 formal complaints between 1st April 2019 and 31st March 2020. Of those:
14 of the above complaints were escalated to stage two of which:
Response timescales*:
*Please note: all times and targets given are in working days.
For the second year running, targets were met for acknowledging and responding to complaints. As can be seen below, the focus has now shifted to focus on the quality of responses.
Praise:
In 2019/20 we also started to log compliments when one of our customers contacted us to praise a member of staff for something.
We logged 39 in total, including: thanking repairs operatives for a job well done (multiple occasions); praising staff for taking action on fly tipping; thanking customer service staff members for help on the phone to resolve various issues; thanking members of our Income team for their help to resolve an issue; and praise for some of our caretakers for various bits of help and advice.
Themes:
Action Taken:
In 33* of the above complaints, the customer was not happy with the stage one response and asked that their complaint be reviewed at stage two. Of those:
*Please note: 26 of the stage two panels were actually heard in 2019/20, but are reported here as they were dealt with in stage one in 2018/19
Response timescales**:
**Please note: all times and targets are given in working days
Acknowledgement and response times vastly improved in 2018/19 compared to recent years and all targets were met.
Themes:
Action taken:
In 11 of the above complaints, the customer was not happy with the stage 1 response and asked that their complaint be reviewed at stage 2. Of those:
Response timescales:
For 2016/17 the group’s performance in responding to stage 1 complaints was 21 days against a target of 10 days. Whilst 2017/18’s performance of 13.8 days represents a considerable improvement on this, we are still missing our target of 10 days. A complaints improvement project is currently in progress that will help staff in meeting our response requirements. Actions include automated alerts for investigating managers to flag when complaint responses are due.
We know we don’t always get things right. However, when we receive a complaint, we look at what has gone wrong and make improvements to try and ensure we don’t repeat the same mistakes. The common areas that our customers told us we were going wrong were:
We are taking the following actions to respond to the above and improve our general performance around complaint handling
In 15 of the above complaints, the customer was not happy with the stage 1 response and asked that their complaint be reviewed at stage 2. Of those:
Response timescales:
The group’s performance around complaint response timescales falls below the standards that we have set ourselves and that customers should expect. We have made improvement in this area a priority for this year and measures have been put in place for closer monitoring of timescales and due dates.
The complaints made during the year were about the following service areas:
We know we don’t always get things right. However, when we receive a complaint, we look at what has gone wrong and make improvements to try and ensure we don’t repeat the same mistakes. The common areas that our customers told us we were going wrong were:
We have taken the following actions to improve on the above: