Customer Voice

What is Customer Voice?

We are a group of Saffron tenants, all working on a volunteer basis with one goal in mind: to make Saffron the best it can be. We oversee how Saffron tenants are involved with decisions that affect the services they use. To do this, we review Saffron’s performance and agree an annual consultation plan for customers. We are also involved in reviewing Saffron policies that impact tenants, and are in the process of nominating Non-Executive Directors for the Board.

Customer Engagement Strategy

Saffron introduced their new Customer Engagement Strategy in 2018. Since then, we have been working behind the scenes with Saffron to set up Customer Voice and to begin to implement the strategy.

The strategy includes a new structure for involving tenants, as detailed in the October 2018 edition of Saffron News here, and Customer Voice is a key part of that. Once it is fully in place, tenants will be able to attend community pop-up events, take surveys in a variety of ways, and take part in Task and Finish Groups. These are opportunities for tenants to meet and look at Saffron’s services, and provide crucial feedback and suggestions. We will look at feedback from all of these activities and make recommendations to the Board.

Part of our role is also to oversee and monitor these changes. Periodically, we will look back at what has been agreed and analyse how well it is working.

Our priorities

As part of our planning, Customer Voice has three priority areas which will influence each piece of work we undertake:

• Inclusion – we aim to ensure that every tenant will be able to access Saffron’s services without prejudice and inequality
• Communication – we aim to help Saffron ensure that their website and any other official communication is simple and tenant friendly
• Saffron experience – we will aim to help Saffron create a positive relationship with their tenants

Over the next few months, look out for information and updates about us on Saffron’s website, in the Saffron News newsletter and on the Saffron Facebook page.

Together with Tenants

Saffron, with the full backing of Customer Voice, has recently become an early adopter of ‘Together with Tenants’. This is a new National Housing Federation scheme for Housing Associations in England that was launched at the start of 2019. It aims to create stronger, more balanced relationships between landlords and their tenants.

The four key ‘Together with Tenants’ actions are:

• A new requirement in the National Housing Federation Code of Governance for boards to be accountable to their tenants and residents.
• A new ‘Together with Tenants Charter’ setting out what tenants and residents can expect from their Housing Association landlord.
• Tenant and resident oversight and scrutiny of the Charter, with a report on how their landlord is doing against the Charter commitments.
• Closely following regulations.

As an early adopter it means Saffron has signed up to be part of the trial.

Your feedback

Our final message is because we value and need your feedback. There will many ways we will ask for your input, so please ensure Saffron has up-to-date contact details for you. We will only use official channels to advertise, give information, or update you as the tenant. These are the Saffron website, email, text, letters and Saffron Trust Facebook page.

You can contact the Customer Voice Team by emailing getinvolved@saffronhousing.co.uk

Customer Voice are currently looking to expand their Group and recruiting more members, please see the advert below.