From this year, every social housing provider will need to publish the results of its Tenant Satisfaction Measures. Here, Alertacall takes a look at how providers can collect data from even the hardest-to-reach groups
Every social housing provider must now publish the results of its Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs). Data needs to be collected from April. And this is not just for the Regulator for Social Housing; tenants, too, will see how well their housing provider is performing.
The measures revolve around four consumer standards; quality of homes, tenancies, neighbourhood and community, and tenant engagement and involvement.
Latest Housemark research shows overall satisfaction levels are falling. Hence, the need to accurately measure – and address weaknesses – must be a priority for every landlord.
Of the 22 measures, just over half (12) are based on tenants’ opinions. The actual questions to be asked have already been prescribed.
However, what landlords do need to think about is how to efficiently collect this data – including seeking feedback from the harder-to-reach groups, such as the digitally excluded.
There are several options when it comes to data collection, each with their own strengths and weaknesses.
Face-to-face interviewing will be the most expensive approach: it is labour intensive, and many tenants may not be around when called on.
Telephone is less costly, but still suffers from not knowing when will be the best time to call to encourage participation. It also makes it less easy to ask questions that involve a rating scale, which some tenants may find hard to visualise.
Postal self-completion questionnaires tend to suffer from not just being slow, but also typically achieve the lowest levels of response.
Digital, whether by email or some other electronic means, has the advantage of the tenant being able to complete in their own time; but is easy to ignore and some tenants, especially older people, may be digitally excluded.
To respond to these challenges, Alertacall has upgraded its touchscreen and now it includes a tenant survey app.
This allows landlords to easily seek tenants views, not just for TSMs, but for any subject where tenant feedback is desirable.
Tenants can access the survey at a time of their choosing and once complete the form is automatically returned and collated.
The overall responses are available in digital form for landlords to analyse.
The messaging app that is already extensively used by providers who have the touchscreen can also be used to ‘nudge’ tents into responding to boost the response rate.
What’s great about this solution is that it can be introduced quickly and easily, and with funding available for this service, it provides not just a solution for collecting TSMs at minimal cost. At the same time, it solves the issue of digital exclusion.
Several of the Alertacall touchscreen’s other features means it does not just enable data collection, but can improve the scores of many of the TSM measures themselves.
These include:
- A repairs reporting app to enable issues to be reported 24 hours a day
- An ASB reporting app to notify the landlord of issues in their neighbourhood
- EIGHT different ways of communicating between tenant and landlord, including video calling, which will result in greater feelings of engagement and involvement
- If you would like to know more about our solution to collecting TSMs please contact us at contact@alertacall.com or call 0808 208 1234
Alertacall is a Housing Digital Stakeholder whose Housing Proactive solution provides digitally enhanced daily contact for housing management.
Image: fizkes/Shutterstock
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