Customer Services, Feedback and Complaints

What can you expect from us?

This guide sets out the service you can expect to receive when you contact us or if you are unhappy with the way we deal with your enquiries. It describes what we do, the standards of service you can expect and how we will check we are meeting them.  It also sets out the things we expect you to do to help us ensure you receive a great service.

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Accessing our services

We want to ensure you are able to access our services in a variety of ways and at times that suit you. By providing us with information about yourself, we also try to tailor our services to meet your needs.

We always aim to deal with your queries quickly and effectively when you contact us. If we are unable to do this, we will tell you why and keep you updated until your queries are resolved. We will also tell you if we are unable to help you or do not provide a service you want.

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Our responsibilities

We will:

• Treat our customers fairly, be polite and respectful, listen and act on the information we receive.
• Provide information in ways that are appropriate to you, including offering translation services and providing information in different formats when asked to do so. 
• Deal with your enquiry at the first point of contact if we can.  If we are unable to do this, we will arrange for someone to get back to you within five working days.
• Make reasonable adjustments where appropriate.
• Monitor the quality of our responses to your queries to ensure we provide the highest standard of service.
• Ask you for feedback and use this information to help us improve the services we provide.
• Always be professional, courteous and keep you updated, including letting you know what we are going to do to fix the problem and by when.

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Complaints

We always aim to provide an excellent service but know that we sometimes get things wrong and you might want to complain.

We welcome your feedback and treat complaints seriously. When we get things wrong, we will admit this and try to put things right.

Full details on how we deal with complaints can be found here or you can ask a member of staff for a copy of our procedure. You can also find information about our compensation policy by clicking here.

We have adopted the Housing Ombudsman’s definition of a complaint. For us, a complaint is:

An expression of dissatisfaction, however made, about the standard of service, actions or lack of action by Six Town Housing (STH) staff, or those acting on our behalf, affecting an individual resident or group of residents.

Complaints should not be confused with everyday enquiries about neighbour nuisance or requesting a repair. These are called service request and we have a separate procedure in place for dealing with such issues.

If we do not accept your complaint, we will tell you why in writing.

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Our responsibilities

We will:

• Ensure our complaints process is accessible and easy to use.
• Seek to resolve issues quickly, learn from our mistakes and take action to prevent problems occurring again.
• Ensure we are open, honest, and transparent in our decision-making.
• Offer an apology and suitable redress when we get things wrong.
• Promoting the Housing Ombudsman Service to ensure that you are aware of the support that is available to you.

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What we expect in return

Your responsibilities:

• Tell us about changes in your circumstances and your preferred methods of contact.
• Where possible, use our website to report routine enquiries or to access information.
• Let us know when we get things right or make a mistake.  
• Give us the opportunity to put things right if you make a complaint.
• Be polite and respectful towards our staff.
• Tell us your views about the service. This will enable us to monitor the quality of the service provided and identify any potential improvements.

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Measuring success

We will know if we are getting things right by:

• Monitoring and reporting our performance against our agreed performance measures; and
• Asking you how happy you are with the service we have provided.

We will report our performance against these standards in our annual report to tenants. Regular updates will also be provided to our Customer Review Group, who are responsible for reviewing how well we are doing and offering constructive challenge.

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Performance measures	Target
Overall satisfaction with the overall service provided by the landlord   TP01 - Percentage of tenants who report that they are satisfied with the overall service from their landlord	79.3%
Satisfaction with the landlord’s approach to handling of complaints    TP09 - Percentage of tenants who report making a complaint in the last 12 months who are satisfied with their landlord’s approach to complaints handling	100%       55.9%
Complaints relative to the size of the landlord - formal Stage 1	105     27.4
Complaints responded to within the Complaints Handling Code   CH02a - Complaints responded to within Complaint Handling Code timescales - Stage 1    CH02b - Complaints responded to within Complaint Handling Code timescales - Stage 2	100%     100%     100%
% of enquiries dealt with at the first point of contact	For information