News

At Flagship Group, our culture of continuous improvement helps us to create meaningful change to provide an outstanding customer service. We want to know what matters most to our customers, to ensure they feel heard and that decisions are led by insight.

In September, using the ‘Flagship Way’ methodology, staff and customers from across the Group started working together to understand and improve how we listen to the customer voice.

Jo Wicker, Director of Customer Engagement said: “We know how important it is to listen and act on our customers' views, and we want to ensure that we have a robust customer involvement framework that is accessible to all.

We defined the purpose of this review from the customer’s perspective, ‘Listen to my voice and understand me.’ We know our customers’ voices are important and whilst we try to listen as much as we can, we know we can do, and need to do much more.”

In the wake of the Grenfell Tower tragedy, the release of the Social Housing White Paper has highlighted the importance of the customer voice, with prime minister, Boris Johnson, saying the document would above all “give social housing tenants a voice and ensure that it is listened to”.

In the past, Flagship has used co-creation with customers to shape a new rent collection process, based on empathy. Much like our homes, one size doesn’t fit all; bringing our customers and staff together to share collective experience, gives more meaningful insight.

Gerry Burns, a Suffolk Housing resident on the review team said: “One of the underlying themes of the new Government White Paper is that the resident comes first and foremost in the decision-making process of all housing associations. Flagship Group has taken this principle on-board and is reviewing processes and procedures to give the resident a voice at the right time and at the right place.”

Jo added: “Flagship, and many others in the sector, are working to make improvements to ensure customers are heard, treated with respect and complaints are dealt with quickly. We always try to be open and transparent in our communication and we want to further improve how we involve our customers in decision making.

To help create more meaningful relationships, as a starting point, the team’s first task has been to find out what the people living in our homes want to be called. It’s a long-standing debate and as the Group has evolved, with Victory Housing and Suffolk Housing joining in recent years, we’re using both customer and resident. So, we’ve put the question to the people who know best.”

For the next few weeks, all staff who speak with our customers will be asking how they want to be referred to as a collective. The Group will also use its social media to include as many of Flagship’s 71,000+ customers to help increase engagement and satisfaction.