We’re recruiting a new team to focus on customer engagement

A new Customer Engagement Team is being set up as part of our Customer Service Team to make our engagement with customers easier.

The team will focus on customer voice, all customer engagement activity and will support teams across the business to engage with customers.

We want to listen to our customers, find out what isn’t working so well and what’s good about what we do. Feedback from customers should drive how we improve what we do and our services.

We are creating this new team because acting on customer voice is one of our main objectives in our 2020-23 business strategy in our looking out for our Citizens pledge. Customer engagement can take many forms – whether that’s actively seeking feedback through satisfaction surveys, learning from complaints or direct involvement of our customers in scrutinising our services.

Our Chief Operating Officer Mads Nelson said: “Our new Customer Engagement and Voice team is being created because listening to our customer voice is the right thing to do. We will be facing increased regulatory scrutiny under the proposals set out in the Social Housing Regulation Bill, which will place consumer regulation on the same footing as economic regulation. It has always been important for housing associations to listen and respect their customers and this will now be tested through greater regulatory powers.

“We have always promoted customer engagement and this new team will bring back an increased focus on raising the profile of our customer voice. Customer engagement is everyone’s responsibility, and the team will be there to provide advice and support on how we can improve engagement across the organisation – whether this is through our Communications Team, Operations or Development teams.

“We have lots of ways that our customers can have their voice heard – the key will be listening to it and acting upon feedback. We want to give customers opportunities to work in partnership with us, so we are focused on providing a great customer service.”

One of the team’s first priorities will be developing engagement plans for tower blocks to find ways to engage with residents living there to develop plans.

Mads added: “There are currently customers in certain demographics that we are not reaching, so we want to carry out work to reach them and speak to them about their experience.

“It’s so important we listen to our customers because we want our organisation to do well, and we want to provide a good service.”

Ruth Arnott will join Citizen as Head of Customer Engagement and Voice in August.

Ruth said: “I’m excited to be heading up this new team that will help us make sure that the customer voice is a golden thread that runs through everything we do.

“Our customers are the experts at living in our homes and can provide us with a perspective that we as housing professionals don’t have. The customer voice is key to making sure our services are appropriate, efficient and effective. The recent Social Housing Regulation Bill has put a spotlight on making sure that all housing associations are engaging with their customers and I’m really looking forward to driving this forward.”

Roles in the new team will be advertised on the jobs section of our website. 

For media enquiries contact our Communications Team.