Being transparent about how we’re doing

As an open and honest organisation, we want you to know how we’re delivering our services and making improvements against the standards we set. We want to share regular performance updates on the things that matter most to you, so we can ensure the services you value are prioritised. We’re also working closely with VIVID Impact, our customer scrutiny panel, as they review our performance and make recommendations to improve our services.

Every 3 months, we'll share an update on our performance. And below you can see how we performed from January to March 2021, compared to our performance against the previous 3 months as well as our targets for these services (where we have them). You can also find out what we've been working on and what we're focusing on next and how this has been informed by your comments and suggestions.

What have we been working on?   

• We planned for the easing of government coronavirus restrictions on 12 April, when we resumed our normal services. We considered how we can clear the routine repairs that we stopped undertaking during lockdown and put plans in place to be able to get these cleared as quickly as we can. We’re hiring more staff to help with the backlog, but it’s still likely to take until October before our services are completely back to normal, so thank you in advance for your patience.
• We’ve continued to offer support to our customers and wider communities during the coronavirus pandemic and provided support to 2,254 customers over the past 3 months. We know that many of our customers are being affected financially due to the coronavirus pandemic and many are at risk of losing their jobs. If you need any support, please get in touch so we can help you.
• We launched VIVID Plus, our new charitable foundation, which will provide more opportunities and support for our customers and local communities. One of the first projects underway is an investment in a local youth project to make people feel safer in their neighbourhood and provide positive alternatives to local young people involved in drugs.
• Our 1,300 involved customers are working on a range of different activities. This includes a review of our approach to service charges, where customers will be looking at the principles we use to set, administer and communicate them. We’ll update you further on the outcomes of this project over the next few months. Customers have also been involved in various policy changes including reviewing our complaints policy and making suggestions to improve the service we provide in this area.
• We launched our new Service Standards after working with a customer group to review and share their priorities as customers. And we’re continuing to work with customers to review how we share our performance information with you so we’re reporting regularly on things that are important to you and that link back to our service standards – look out for our new and improved quarterly performance information next time.          

What are we focusing on over the next few months?

• Reintroducing our repairs service as lockdown restrictions ease. As lockdown restriction eased in April, we’ve reintroduced our repairs service and will be contacting any customers who reported a routine repair during the lockdown period to book their repair in. Thank you for your patience as it will be some time before our services are completely back to normal. Find out more here.
• Ease of access to services. The implementation of our new contact centre telephone system is under way, which will give us the ability to offer a better service and new channels for you to contact us through. We hope the first phase will go live this summer.
• Complaints. We’re making changes to the way we manage complaints. A new team is being formed which will be in place this summer called The Customer Success team with the aim to get your queries resolved faster and keep you updated better as we resolve the issue.  We’ll provide a further update on this next quarter.