Rent arrears, complaints, customer satisfaction – challenges that all housing associations regularly face.

But just as dripping tap is a symptom of an underlying problem, these common housing association pain points are usually a symptom of a deeper issue.

And that issue is often related to customer vulnerabilities.

Last year the Housing Ombudsman released its ‘Relationship of Equals’ report calling for a Royal Commission to create a long-term plan for social housing after finding that current approaches for the sector are not working for residents with a vulnerability.

The report found that 68% of customers with a vulnerability said their landlord had not made any reasonable adjustments, despite being asked to.

And some shocking case studies in the report highlighted instances of:

• Insensitive comments to a mother about her terminally ill daughter

• A domestic abuse survivor being advised by the landlord to return to her property

• A resident’s mental health blamed for the landlord missing repair appointments despite it being aware the resident would be at a health clinic

The report recommends human-centric provision of services and an individual approach to delivery methods.

It’s something that’s also highlighted in the Social Housing Regulation Act. The Transparency, Influence and Accountability Standard states that registered providers must treat tenants and prospective tenants with fairness and respect and they must meet their diverse needs and take action to deliver fair and equitable outcomes.

Regulators, tenants, and industry bodies all see the urgent need for vulnerabilities to form a key part of customer service in social housing, so how can providers take on this challenge?

The curious case of the dripping tap

Let’s go back to that dripping tap. It’s a common customer issue and when reported will usually be classified as routine repair and head to the back of the maintenance queue.

But what if that tap belongs to a young man with autism? What if every drip is like torture to him and it’s having a huge impact on his daily life?

If we don’t know about the vulnerabilities experienced by customers and the effects they have on their behaviours and lives we can’t make the reasonable adjustments that will meet their diverse needs.

The key to doing this? Curiosity.

A culture of curiosity to recognise, record, and respond to tenants’ needs must be encouraged and embedded across all customer facing teams.

Identifying vulnerabilities in tenants

Before we explore how to develop a culture of curiosity, let’s take a step back and look at what kinds of vulnerabilities tenants may be living with.

Vulnerabilities are not always obvious and can present themselves in different ways.

There are four categories of vulnerabilities you might encounter in a housing association setting:

• Person – things like protected characteristics​, language​, neuro diversity, processing information​, socially isolation, addictions.​

• Property – things like disrepair​, damp and mould, ​hoarding​, condition survey​, safety

• Situation – things like employment​, cost of living​, benefits​, bereavement​, experiences, refugee status​, relationship breakdown​.

• Other people – things like domestic abuse​, sexual violence​, anti-social behaviour, safeguarding​, cuckooing​.

It’s important to recognise that vulnerabilities are not always permanent and can shift and evolve over time.

The customer service see-saw

To provide those experiencing vulnerabilities with the right service it must be the responsibility of all those in customer facing roles including: customer service advisers, repair operatives, housing officers, income officers, and antisocial behaviour officers.

The people in these roles will have the technical knowledge and skills to carry out their tasks. But do they have the people skills they need to operate in a way that ensures customers get the support they need?

It’s vital to ensure your customer facing teams have a balance of technical skills and people psychology.

Back to that dripping tap. This time it belongs to a domestic abuse survivor, and they keep missing appointments with a male repair operative. Being curious about the person behind the problem will lead to better outcomes – in this case sending a female repair operative.

The zone of helpfulness 

It’s also key to instil in your team an understanding of the right level of help to offer to tenants and to be aware of professional and regulatory boundaries.

It can be useful to think of this as the ‘zone of helpfulness’. On one side is ‘under-involved’ demonstrated by not listening to customers, no empathy, curiosity, and a lack of respect – making assumptions and behaving inflexibly. Being under-involved not only affects customer experience and satisfaction but could lead to safeguarding issues. ‘Over-involved behaviours include making promises, being over-familiar, personal and getting attached – offering advice, taking over and disempowering the tenant.  Being over-involved not only disempowers but can lead to breaches of regulatory responsibility.

The sweet spot in the zone of helpfulness is asking the right questions, listening and adapting, offering choice and making referrals – building trust and empowering and enabling people with vulnerabilities to make best use of services and their own decisions about the level of support they want.

It takes curiosity and empathy to establish the correct level of engagement and support to provide.

Let’s look at another example. An older person is in rent arrears, she mentions to a customer service advisor how her family are good to her and her grandson comes around daily and she likes to buy him nice things. Asking the right questions and listening could lead the advisor to suspect she is being financially abused and prompt them to flag this. Ignoring it could be a safeguarding issue, and contacting the grandson would be getting over-involved.

The power of curiosity

When you have customer facing teams who recognise the value of curiosity, are empowered to ask the right questions, and are trusted and able to make reasonable adjustments, not only do tenants experiencing vulnerabilities benefit from greater support but housing associations have more engaged teams, and more productive operations.

In a sector where an ever-greater focus is on customer experience and Ombudsman recommendations around tenants with vulnerabilities continue to surface, now is the time for future-focused housing associations to develop an environment of cultural curiosity. Training and development for those working on the customer frontline will be vital for organisations who want to embed this and build a sustainable customer-centric business.

About the author:

Simon Bernstein is a Housing Association Coach & Trainer specialising in customer experience and leadership. He has over 20 years’ experience helping Housing Associations to develop, create and embed a culture which is built around delivering excellence of customer experience at its core. Get In Touch – Empathy Transformation