Modernising our services
We’re creating even more ways for you to get in touch with us, more flexibly, at your convenience.
This year, based on listening to you, we made changes to improve how we deliver quality housing services more efficiently and conveniently to you, including:
We’ve seen better efficiencies being delivered through our new customer contact management system that went live in May 2023, which has had a positive impact on the contact centre being able to answer and resolve more enquiries at first contact.
With smarter technology to join up all Aster systems and customer contact across the Group, we’ve created a more integrated approach to how we can better help you faster, in the short and longer terms.
- Embedding building safety for homes to meet regulatory safe standards
- Repairs improvement plans including better ways of scheduling repairs and rescheduling appointments at your convenience on MyAster
- A positive complaints assistance and handling process so you can be assured of consistency and progress
- A damp and mould task force to prevent and / or identify and tackle these issues in homes pro-actively
- A group wide integration of data and systems to deliver more streamlined, accurate, efficient and responsive customer services
- More local operational teams with a focus on local communities and needs
- More sustainable, competitive and transparent supplier partnerships and contracts to drive down service charges for the future and improve quality standards
- A more direct telephone system for finding your way to the right place and person to get the right help for your enquiry faster.
Improving our contact centre
Developing MyAster
We know from your feedback that you want us to make your lives easier by offering ways for you to get in touch, and self-service at your convenience and whenever suits you best.
Now 53% (more than 23,000) of you are registered with the MyAster digital portal, and the live chat service continues to help customers who need to get in touch urgently at any time. Around 250 customers are signing up each month, finding the service handy for contacting us, paying bills and logging repairs or making changes to existing appointments.
Our heating and electrical servicing appointments went live in January 2024, and we added the ability to report 21 additional types of faults within the home to the MyAster booking menu
in March 2024.
Next year, we’ll be adding heating repairs, the ability for C&C and Enham customers to report repairs including communal repairs, and launching the MyAster Census, allowing you to update information such as your preferred contact method and medical details.
We’re averaging about 777 repairs reported on MyAster every month, along with over 8,000 payments and a further 1,500 updates, requests or reports made by customers.
Our ‘Live chat’ service has been a great way for our customers to get in touch directly with our team to log repairs, ask questions, update their tenancy and more. Over 17,000 connections were made on Live Chat during the year.
We’re trialling new technologies to see how we can offer more ways for customers to interact with us virtually to provide an easier and quicker service for everyone.
A key part of our customer services is our work around developing a positive complaints culture. We’ve been listening to our customers and colleagues around how we respond to complaints about your homes or the services we offer you.
We know it’s important that we help you to find a solution
to any issue in your home. As a direct result of what you’ve told us, we’ve improved our complaints handling process. We found the best customer service outcomes were in cases where we communicated well and kept customers updated throughout the complaint process.
We now conduct regular learning circles events, bringing colleagues together to discuss complaint cases and customer feedback and how we can learn to do better in future.
We put a new case management system in place, which allows us to track complaints more easily and means you’ll know in real time how we are progressing your complaint and what the timings and next steps are. We know that keeping our promises to you when we resolve your complaint is vital to building trust. That’s why we've changed how we track complaints to use a more efficient and visible system.
Developing a positive complaints culture
This allows us to capture the promises and actions agreed and monitor them throughout to make sure they are completed, and you are satisfied.
We’ve provided training for all team members to take part in, which also furthers their knowledge about and compliance with the Government’s new Complaints Handling Code, implemented in April 2024.
We aim to provide a great service to our customers but know that we don’t always get it right. Any complaints we receive give us an opportunity to listen and learn from our mistakes to improve the services we provide to you. You can find out more about customer satisfaction and complaints here.
Case study: Len Arthur from our Designated Complaints Panel (DCP)
“Eight years ago, I read one of the Aster policies and it was all in corporate speak. As someone who worked in health and safety for many years, I could understand it but knew that some of my elderly neighbours and other customers wouldn’t, when trying to work through housing matters.
"In the newsletter, I saw a call out for customers to get involved, to share their voice and opinions to influence the improvement and design of Aster’s services. I emailed in and went from there.
"It was easy to get involved and I was quickly participating in important activities, such as testing the MyAster portal before it went live to ensure the customer journey was a positive one. Now I’m part of a great group of fellow customers that are all supportive of each other.
"I joined the Designated Complaints Panel in 2022 and became Vice Chair of the group in 2023.
"My initial input was to get customer communications into plain English. This is a positive turning point that I’ve been involved in and remains as important today as it was then. My suggestions, working with other customers in the group, were taken on board and put into practise.
"Most recommendations made by involved customers and groups result in a real change and help to shape and make processes easier for us all. Being involved on behalf of Aster’s customers in a review or process is rewarding as I get to be a part of helping other customers. The fact our voice, thoughts and opinions matter and help other customers to have better outcomes and feel valued is
a real motivation to stand up and be heard.”
