Bridge Housing Annual Report 2022 - Flipbook - Page 44
SPOTLIGHT
Customer Service Results in Northern Beaches
We pride ourselves on adopting an innovative approach to delivering housing services to our tenants. Providing an
excellent customer experience is one of the foundations that allows us to change lives for the better. Our tenants
and the communities we work in are diverse and we are dedicated to delivering person-centred services that directly
respond to need. We are empathetic and work hard to build trust. We care deeply about our tenants and want this to
be reflected in every interaction.
Each year we develop a comprehensive customer experience
strategy and action plan to drive improvements in tenant
satisfaction and support a culture of service excellence.
Our strategy is based on three key pillars which we believe
are the basis of an excellent customer experience:
People
our people are skilled and supported to
deliver excellent services to our tenants
Process
our processes make it easy for tenants
and staff to get what they need
Systems
our systems provide tenants with choices
in how they interact with us and free up
staff to spend as much time as possible
with our tenants
Open and ongoing communication is the golden thread
that ties these three pillars together.
Our strategy is underpinned by a series of projects aligned
with the key pillars, designed to improve our customer
experience. One of our big goals in the first year was to
close the gap in satisfaction between our social housing
management transfer tenants on the Northern Beaches
and our longer standing tenants.
While our projects delivered improved services for tenants
across our portfolio, we had a real focus on our new
Northern Beaches residents. This included:
• A focus on tenant engagement to foster trust – we
established the Northern Beaches Tenant Advisory
Group, ran an online engagement program to keep
connected during the 2021 lockdown and piloted a
tenant scrutiny panel.
• Investment in home upgrades and repairs – we
assumed responsibility for all maintenance in 2021-22
previously managed by the NSW Land and Housing
Corporation. We undertook a significant home upgrade
program as well as our repairs and maintenance works,
spending $7.6M. Our Northern Beaches residents can
now expect the same exceptional service.
40 | Bridge Housing
• Making every interaction count – we have reviewed
our core processes including property inspections,
rent review and rent arrears so that our tenants know
what is happening and what they need to do next.
We are running a monthly prize draw to thank our
tenants for looking after their homes and allowing us
access for inspections.
• Making it easy – we have rolled out webforms, QR
codes, and simplified our letters to make it easier for
our tenants to receive assistance.
We have got another ambitious program of customer
service improvements to deliver over the coming year
to continue this great momentum. We are extremely
proud of the difference we have made to our customer
service standards and approach and look forward to
closing the satisfaction gap for our Northern Beaches
tenants.
It was a big year, but the hard work paid off. We saw a
fantastic increase in tenant satisfaction across almost
every measure, with overall satisfaction up to 81 per
cent across our whole portfolio. While we saw great
improvements across almost every question for all our
tenants, the results were particularly impressive among
our Northern Beaches tenants compared to 2021-22 results:
12%
increase in satisfaction
with communication
13%
increase in influence decision making
6%
increase in satisfaction with repairs
9%
increase in overall satisfaction