Exploring the relationship between customer satisfaction and trust in the housing sector

As part of Orlo’s BIG Social 2024, Julian Pike (Executive Director, United Welsh) presented his organisation’s ongoing journey towards building trust within their communities.

United Welsh is a Registered Social Landlord (RSL), covering 11 local authorities in South East Wales. The organisation serves 11,000 customers living in approximately 6,500 homes and registers over 100,000 customer contacts per month. They provide tenants with a wide offering, from traditional landlord services including property repairs and maintenance, to provision around anti-social behaviour, bespoke mental health programmes, and homelessness.

The ongoing cost of living crisis has deeply affected communities in Wales, as it has across most of the UK. Social housing associations such as United Welsh are increasingly directing resources to help their tenants navigate financial hardship, mental health issues and homelessness. In fact many residents view the organisation as another emergency service. As of March 2024, data shows that over 11,000 people were living in temporary accommodation in Wales, including over 3,000 children.

In order to attempt to address the shortfall, the Welsh government has set a target of creating 20,000 new social homes, supported by a £1.4 billion investment. Julian shared that United Welsh has recently invested in a development initiative worth £55 million per year, with a commitment to build 1,300 homes over the next five years.

High profile tragedies such as the fire at London’s Grenfell Tower have further eroded trust between social housing associations and their tenants. This, along with increasing demand for housing and significant financial constraints, has provided United Welsh with a challenging context for fostering customer satisfaction and trust.

Regardless of the challenging wider context, United Welsh has continued to maintain its commitment to delivering high quality services to customers. Until recently, the organisation had focused on customer satisfaction as the key measure of success for the organisation. Over the past year, Julian explained that the focus has widened to also encompass customer experience.

As part of this work, Julian explained that by running regular resident surveys, United Welsh identified a number of drivers in building customer satisfaction – three of which United Welsh had the power to influence. These were: trust (72% of those surveyed said that they trusted their social landlord); repairs and maintenance (77% were satisfied), and the organisation being perceived as “easy to deal with” (83% agreed with this statement). United Welsh’s Executive Team recognised that if they improved these scores, customer satisfaction would increase as a result.

Diving deeper into the data, Julian demonstrated that trust was one of the organisation’s lowest indicators across the board (2% lower than other Welsh RSLs) along with United Welsh’s ability to “listen and act” (only 70% agreed with this statement). In addition, data showed that 30% of residents didn’t feel they could “participate in decision making”.

From gathering qualitative insights around what communities were saying about the organisation, the word “promise” came up as a prominent theme. Julian concluded that customers were regularly making contact and receiving a positive experience initially (evidenced by high scores around “easy to deal with”), however United Welsh were failing to listen deeply to communities’ issues and act on feedback. They were overpromising and under-delivering, and failing to communicate their service parameters. This was eroding trust between the organisation and its communities.

For United Welsh, trust is essential. Trust builds loyalty and goodwill, meaning that residents are more likely to collaborate positively with United Welsh – for example when they require access to their property to carry out regulatory checks, or to report repairs and maintenance in a timely manner. If customers don’t trust them, they are less likely to comply with these requirements and more inclined to make repeated contact and appeal United Welsh’s decisions. For United Welsh, trust is more than just a “nice to have” – it’s crucial for carrying out essential work in the most efficient way. As Julian said, “trust is an enabler”.

While Julian explained that the organisation still has some way to go in terms of fostering trust in their communities, he described some of the initiatives that have already started:

Moving focus from customer satisfaction to customer experience

United Welsh are well on their way towards becoming a service-oriented company and are in the midst of discovering what that looks and feels like, and the ways in which they need to change in order to put customers at the centre of their organisation.

Julian elaborated on the organisation’s decision to adopt a user-centred design approach, involving customers in every stage of the design, development and deployment of services. The data uncovered a desire for tenants to feel more included in the development of services, and so United Welsh has recently launched volunteer programmes and has invited specific customers to become directly involved in shaping services. By prioritising customer experience, United Welsh aims to have a better understanding of their tenants’ needs and wants, and in turn to provide better services.

Defining standards for key services

Julian explained that, depending on the team and officer working on a service, there could be some discrepancy in experience for the customer. By defining certain standards and ways of working, every tenant will receive the same high quality service levels. Also, defining standards helps to set expectations for staff, and holds both individuals and the organisation to account.

Clarifying communications and implementing new systems

United Welsh plans to improve their internal comms, taking care to clearly communicate the newly re-defined standards and service parameters so that expectations are always met.

They are also working on external comms, bringing the different systems they work with into one place so that the organisation has a holistic view of a customer’s experience. This means that repairs and maintenance enquiries will be logged in the CRM tool along with other information held about the resident.

United Welsh has also recently launched a new complaints system and process, finally bringing all complaints into one single place. Not only does this allow all teams to have one source of truth, it can eventually become a rich source of data for interrogating the source of issues.

Closing the feedback loop: listening, acting, and delivering

As explained previously, United Welsh identified a disconnect between listening to their customers’ feedback, acting on it, and communicating clearly what has or hasn’t happened as a result. Given that repairs and maintenance was defined by United Welsh as an area for improvement, United Welsh’s Executive Team made engagement around repairs and maintenance a priority – ensuring that all three steps were taken and that the feedback loop was always closed with the customer directly.

Julian was clear that no strategy works in isolation. United Welsh’s plan relies on improving customer experience; defined service standards; a united approach towards repairs and maintenance; clear communications and closing the feedback loop with customers. The work extends far beyond one team, requiring a connected and strategic approach from the entire organisation. Comms teams are in a unique position to influence and shape the way in which housing organisations can respond to all aspects of the Trust Pyramid: listening to their tenants, engaging deeply; improving their experience and ultimately building trust.