Access and customer care policy

This policy outlines what means we will provide to enable customers to get in touch with us and access our services.

Introduction

We put customers at the heart of what we do and are committed to creating an excellent customer experience, ensuring customers have access to the right service at the right time.

This policy sets out how we will ensure that we are accessible to all customers and that they are able to get in touch when they need us the most in a way that suits them.

Our external customers include tenants, licensees, shared owners, leaseholders, prospective residents, former residents, service users and other stakeholders. Our internal customers are our colleagues. This policy and associated service standards apply to external customers only and our commitment to internal customers is covered in our people policies, procedures, and colleague handbook.

This policy should be read in conjunction with our customer information policy.

Policy statement

We will offer customers a variety of ways to contact us as well as giving them ways to self-serve via the Magna website and our customer portal.

When customers want to call us, we will have a centralised free phone number where all queries can be directed to.

We will continually review our contact channels to ensure that we are evolving with new technologies and continuing to give our customers choice.

We will be available for emergencies 24 hours a day, every day of the year. We categorise an emergency as a threat to life or limb and where there is serious, immediate risk to the health and safety or the security of a customer's home.

We will regularly ask for customer feedback across all channels and learn from the feedback.

We will create Key Performance Indicators (KPI's) for customer contact and regularly report on performance.

Our published service standards are central to our access and customer care policy. These apply to all service areas, including tenancy management, repairs, support services and resident involvement, and set out the standards our customers can expect from us and how these standards will be monitored.

Excessive or unreasonable contact from customers will be dealt with via our unacceptable customer behaviour policy.

We will ensure that we are accessible to all customers and will comply with the Equality Act 2010. We will comply with the principles of the General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR).

Responsibilities

The Director of Customer Operations is the accountable person in relation to all aspects of the access and customer care policy.

The Head of Customer Experience and Home Services is responsible for the operational management of the access and customer care policy.

Governance, Performance Management and Review

The policy will be considered and approved every three years in accordance with the policy review timetable.

The performance of this policy is covered under our Performance Management Framework.