We’re undertaking a new customer satisfaction perception survey from April 2023 to meet new regulatory requirements.

Further, tenant satisfaction is a key measure of our ‘People First’ strategy, and measures from this survey form part of our corporate KPI suite.

We’re taking a ‘look twice’ approach to our customer satisfaction survey results: looking once to improve things for the individual customer affected; and a second time to identify wider patterns that can improve things for our business and wider customer base. As such, we propose to take a sample-based approach rather than a census approach, and a phased approach of surveying continuously across the year, rather than as a one-off annual activity.

We’re taking this approach as we believe this steady and manageable stream of feedback to be the most effective way to comprehensively listen and respond to the feedback received, providing the most benefit to both the customers responding and our business.

Additionally, although satisfaction statistics are important, we believe the greatest value from these surveys in uncovering the reasons behind the figures, understanding, and learning from, the customer’s experience. As such, we’ve chosen to take a primarily telephone-based approach to our surveys,^*1 allowing us to build a rapport with the respondents and delve deeper into their perceptions of us to gain additional and actionable insight for improvement.

We also know this to be the most inclusive method to surveying our customers, as we’re missing email and mobile phone data for some of our lead tenants currently.

Due to the size of our housing stock, we propose to take a sampling approach in line with the TSM guidance requirements.
Due to our current stock of shared ownership properties being less than 1000, we are only required to survey those in our rented accommodation.^*2
Each household must not be represented more than once per year.

In line with the required minimum levels for statistical accuracy (as shown in the table below), we will ensure that our sample size is calculated each year to be statistically significant and provide results with a 95% confidence interval of +/- 4%.

To do this, we will take a random sample of our households as our sampling frame to invite to survey each month, to achieve responses from at least 47 customers per month (to be reviewed annually to reflect changes in stock numbers).

We will utilise the ‘random selection’ filter within the Call Manager function to allow us to randomly select the tenants to invite.

Table 5: Required minimum levels of statistical accuracy for overall satisfaction

We’ll take a stratified random sampling approach, dividing households into subgroups based on their tenancy start date.
Each month, our random sample will select from only those with tenancy start dates from a specified calendar month.

This is to ensure that all households have an equal chance of being selected across the course of the year and prevents the same household from being surveyed more than once per year.

In any particular month, we intend to sample only those households with a tenancy start month of five months prior. For example, in September we would be surveying households with a tenancy start month of April.
This is to prevent over-surveying or under-surveying of our newest tenants (i.e. those with us less than 12 months).

Matching surveying calendar month exactly to tenancy start date calendar month would mean surveying these tenants immediately at move in (clashing with our new tenant survey) or at their 1-year anniversary (excluding the voices of any customers with us for less than a year).

Having a five-month lag means that these customers will have a gap between these survey invites and will also mean that customers with us less than a year will still get the opportunity to be surveyed.

We utilise software called ‘CX Feedback’ for customer surveys, which allows us to track responses and complete surveys by a combination of telephone, text and email. Due to our primary preference towards telephone (discussed in section 1 ‘Rationale’, above) we propose to take the following approach to collecting the survey responses:

•  Invite attempt 1 – phone

•  Invite attempt 2 – phone

•  Invite attempt 3 – text/email (dependent on available contact data and recorded preferences)

We believe that the combination of multiple attempts, combined with multiple completion methods, provides fair and balanced opportunity to participate.

When the telephone calls are made, the customer will also be given the option of having the survey sent to them for self-completion via text or email if they prefer. The customer will also be offered a call back for telephone completion at a time more preferred to them if this is more suitable for them.

All surveys will be collected through the survey built in the CX Feedback software, and the data stored there securely.

The survey questions included are the 12 questions required by the TSM regulation. In addition to these, we have included open text comment boxes after some questions to record additional insight and reasons behind the answers given. A further measure capturing satisfaction with value for money of rent has also been added, which we previously collected through STAR and is used by the Finance team for various reports.

At the end of the survey, we include a question to establish whether they consent to being re-contacted regarding any issues they raised.

A survey introduction page has been designed, with wording matching the requirements of page 8 of TSM guidance Annex 5. This also includes a link to our privacy statement, and a statement that the responses are confidential, and responses will not affect the customer’s tenancy.

It is important that we make participation in the survey as accessible as possible. The below details potential identified barriers to participation, and actions taken to reduce these:

1.  Language – Telephone researcher to speak in plain English and clearly. All written instructions to be written in plain English. ‘Read aloud’ functionality included in the survey design for those self-completing.

2.  Visual impairment – Telephone survey completion reduces this barrier. Font size of 14 or above used throughout the survey. ‘Read aloud’ functionality included in the survey design for those self-completing.

3.  Literacy – Telephone survey completion reduces this barrier. All written instructions to be written in plain English. ‘Read aloud’ functionality included in the survey design for those self-completing.

4.  Lack of access to digital – Telephone survey completion reduces this barrier. Options to send by text or email too.

It’s a requirement of the TSM regulation to ensure that the survey results are representative of our customer population.

This includes the following characteristics as identified by the TSM guidance: stock type; age; ethnicity; building type; household or property size; and geographical area.

To do this, we are taking the following approach:

•   A review of our internal customer data, identifying data quality gaps and driving forward an action plan to improve them

•   Utilising the ‘representation monitoring’ dashboard provided within CX Feedback, which compares the characteristic breakdown of the respondents compared to the target population. Customer characteristics to monitor will include, but not be limited to:-

stock type; age; ethnicity; building type; household or property size; geographical area.

•   Utilise this insight to target under-represented groups where needed

A data protection assessment was carried out in Jan 2021 for our CX Feedback surveying software and activity. This will be reviewed every three years.

Customer response data is kept confidential and consent is gathered through the survey as to whether they are happy to be re-contacted regarding any issues raised.

When conducted by telephone, customers are asked at the beginning if they consent to take part. Customers who receive a self completion questionnaire can choose whether or not to complete the survey by clicking on the attached link. A link to Aspire’s data privacy statement is included at the top of every survey.

Access to CX Feedback is secure and requires individual log in, with accounts set up and managed by the Business Intelligence team. Permission settings are utilised within the CX Feedback software to control the level of information users have access to. This is controlled by the software administrators within the Business Intelligence team.

Dashboards

The primary method of displaying results is through live data visualisation dashboards. Other visualisation tools may be used to support reporting in static reports. 

Calculations

The majority of the TSM questions are answered on a 5 point scale. Those classified as ‘satisfied’ or to ‘agree’ will be only those who have selected one of the top 2 options from the 5 point scale. Those selecting the middle response will be included in the calculations, but those responding ‘don’t know’ or ‘not applicable’ will be removed from performance calculations.

Internal Reporting

Results and performance will be shared internally on a monthly basis through the Performance reports. These will be published on the Insight Hub for the whole organisation to access, and also shared upwards to leadership and Board through the usual reporting channels.

The corporate KPIs have been updated for the 23/24 financial year to include the TSMs to improve transparency and accountability within leadership and the wider business.

External reporting

As required by the regulator, results will be submitted annually to the regulator by the Business Intelligence team alongside the other measures collected.