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Reframing the customer relationship

There are major benefits to be gleaned from engaging with as many tenants as possible, says Philippa Jones

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Housing associations have devised various models of tenancy management over the years but it’s fair to say that the relationship that much of the sector has with its customers is still reactive, rather paternalistic and focused on the few.
Rent cuts, reductions in grant funding, and the impact of welfare reform on customers’ ability to pay are really starting to bite and the natural temptation is to rein back on frontline services. A survey published last year suggested almost three in four housing professionals thought their organisation had shed staff, while four in 10 claimed their workloads were now unmanageable.
As resources become scarcer, many seek to offset the impact of reductions in staffing through better use of data and smarter targeting of services at those most in need.


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But there is a danger that by doing this we become even more reactive. That as we engage with fewer and fewer customers, we tend to have contact only at times of crisis or when things have gone wrong. This in turn can distort our view of all our customers and how we design services.

“The relationship that much of the sector has with its customers is still reactive.”

So while the instinctive reaction might be to make savings, actually these economic challenges make it more important that we invest in what is ultimately our greatest asset: our tenants.
Cormac Russell, faculty member of the Asset-Based Community Development Institute in the US, believes there has been a trend over many years for services to encroach into areas where communities used to provide mutual support. He argues that “over the past 30 or 40 years we’ve really become very focused on what people didn’t have, on what they need to receive, rather than what they can contribute”.
We’ve been influenced by the ideas of Mr Russell and others in the asset-based community development space as we’ve advanced and tested our neighbourhood coaching approach.
How can we get to know the gifts, skills and talents of our customers (and their communities) if we are spending less and less time with them? By getting to know our customers better and establishing links with the wide range of community assets too, we can all play a part in fostering connections and building on what’s already working.
For too long we have encouraged tenants to believe that whatever the problem, the answer was to ring their landlord so they could send someone out to fix it. What if that customer could solve the problem themselves or with help from a neighbour or someone else within their community?
By sharing skills, time or a step ladder, new connections are made and the community is strengthened. This isn’t a poor substitute for a service, it is a whole lot better. Though of course there are things that we should always do for our tenants – particularly in relation to the safety of their homes.
We want a relationship with customers which is grown up; where we tell it like it is and believe in their capacity to take responsibility and work out their own solutions to problems. We’ve realised that to do this well we need to invest in frontline services and build our coaching capability by developing mutual trust.

“We are quickly discovering that customers and their communities are full of potential.”

A year or so ago we came across the work Clare McGregor was doing at Styal women’s prison. She was using executive coaching techniques to help prisoners start to take back control of their lives and focus on the future. “If we can go into a prison – which is the most non self-determining environment you can possibly imagine – and talk to people about self-determination and goals, then you can certainly do that with the customers living in your own homes,” she told us.
Ms McGregor and her business partner Liz Cross have since helped us develop a learning pathway for our 150 neighbourhood coaches. This is giving colleagues the confidence and tools to be able to work in the communities where our customers live and to start building honest, trusting relationships with every single one of them.
We are quickly discovering that customers and their communities are full of potential. Reframing the relationship between landlord and tenant in a more positive way is not something we claim to be experts in. But it is something we are passionate about in our desire to create sustainable communities and lasting change for people.


Philippa Jones, chief executive, Bromford

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