Homes for Northumberland Review of Customer services

As part of our drive to combine efficiencies with the delivery of more accessible and customer focussed services we are looking to restructure parts of our service. We are, therefore, seeking your views on two customer contact issues to inform our plans.

1 Customer Contact

 The majority of our customer contact with Homes for Northumberland, like most other housing organisations, is by telephone. We already have an effective calls centre that deals with repairs for most of the area.  The Alnwick area is currently dealt with by a separate area-based repairs team.

We propose to establish a customer contact centre based to deal consistently with all calls from Homes for Northumberland tenants.  This will receive all types of enquiries including repairs and deal with the majority at the first point of contact.  This new service will provide a single telephone number for tenants and leaseholders to access services with extended opening times. The proposal is from 8.00am-6.00pm Monday to Friday.

Question 1  

If you have a housing enquiry or repair would you prefer to contact us at a local customer contact centre using one telephone contact number?.

Yes / No

2. Customer Service

We believe that ease of access and responsiveness to individual needs are central to providing excellent customer service. Currently we deliver services through a structure of specialised teams, such as rents, lettings and repairs. This involves dealing with different staff and teams for different enquiries.  Whilst we need to retain specialist knowledge we believe that customers prefer a single point of contact.

We propose to develop area-based Neighbourhood Housing teams with the aim of providing a more seamless, supportive service for customers throughout their tenancy.

Questions 2

Would you prefer to have one named area Housing Officer who has responsibility for dealing with your housing and area needs for Homes for Northumberland?

Yes / No

We would like to hear your views.

You can contact us on residentparticipation@hfn.uk.com or telephone 01670 542093.

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