Customer Services
Old Ford's action plan
Below is a summary, but you can to read or print the full plan with update here - 
Detailed Final Action Plan With Updates 20100930 (255 KB).
The improvements are grouped into main themes:
- Access (to services) and Customer Care
- Equality and Diversity
- Value for Money
Access and Customer Care
This area looks at how easy it is for residents to access the services inspected and how well Old Ford does at providing a service that meets resident’s needs. It also makes a judgement about how well the we manage complaints and reports performance to residents
This is what we plan to do:
- With residents, we will review the opening hours the office
- We will develop options for extending the hours when repairs can be reported with residents
- We will invest in training and development to improve telephone call management to improve satisfaction
- We will improve how we diagnose repairs to help get it right first time
- We will develop a local offer for services, based on the TSA standards as a minimum, which will be based on residents priorities
- We will review our repairs service standards in light of learning from customer feedback
- We will review and publish new service standards for our planned works programmes
- We will improve access to performance information on our web-site and newsletters, including how we compare with other organisations
- We will further improve how we deal with complaints including how we follow up what we agree to do
- We will develop new ways to get residents involved in inspecting the services we offer
Equality and Diversity
This area looks at how Old Ford makes sure all residents have fair and equal access to services by ensuring services take account of the diverse need’s of residents, uses the best methods for communicating with residents and ensures underrepresented groups are supported to get involved.
This is what we plan to do:
- We will continue to collect and review diversity information, using it to take account of residents needs
- We will report how we use diversity information to shape services
- We will make sure all staff and Board members participate in diversity training
- We will use diversity information when planning home improvements, making better use of this opportunity to introduce appropriate aids and adaptations
- We will improve how we communicate with residents, making more use of translation services and other formats only when appropriate
- We will feature our key messages in the residents magazine in the two main community languages
- We will ensure our offices and community facilities remain fully accessible to residents and other service users with disabilities
Value for Money
This area looks at how Old Ford makes sure services represent the best value for residents. This includes how our costs compare against similar organisation’s costs, how we make sure services meet the best quality and provide the highest levels of satisfaction for the price paid, and how residents get involved in decisions to buy the services we need, for example, repairs contractors. It also focuses on how we reduce our costs over time to make the best use of rent money residents pay.
This is what we plan to do:
- We will set up a new repairs group for residents to shape how the repairs and maintenance services will be delivered
- We will check how our costs compare with similar organisations and learn from the best, most cost efficient ones
- With residents we will use the cost comparison information to review major works costs and identify the top 10 priorities for improvement
- We will reduce the proportion of emergency repairs and increase the amount of planned repairs
- We will improve our collection of income from residents where they are responsible for the cost of a repair
- We will report to residents how much money we have saved and how we have used this money to improve services
