Golding CEO features in Housing Digital during Customer Service week
As we celebrate Customer Service week, our Interim CEO, Sue Chalkley, talks about how we are renewing our commitment to our customers in her Housing Digital blog.
"I dread ringing my service provider when I have a problem with my broadband reception at home. I dread ringing them so much, that I will put up with faults for weeks and months before I can muster the energy to spend the time and emotional energy to get things fixed," says Sue.
"Customer Service Week is a great opportunity to remind ourselves about how our customers are central to all we do. They are the heart of our organisations – we exist for them, and the services that we provide should be the highest quality.
"After the terrible Grenfell Tower fire, I remember the new housing minister travelling around the country, holding roundtable meetings with social housing tenants. He was clearly greatly impressed by the people he met, and I think it’s fair to say that these meetings changed some of his pre-conceptions.
"This in turn inspired the Social Housing Green Paper. Five key points emerged from these meetings. All were important. One of these five was about how the stigma of living in a social home, on a run-down estate, impacts on self-esteem and how self-esteem affects our life chances.
Good customer service should start from the customer’s perspective – not ours
"Our role, as housing associations that care about so much more than the bricks and mortar, must be to work to remove that stigma. Much of this will come from plans to improve people’s homes and the local environment but, in this Customer Service Week, it also importantly comes from how we treat our customers. "
To read Sue's blog in full visit Housing Digital's website.