Member Article

Vela's customer service standards gain prestigious independent validation

The Vela Group, which provides thousands of homes to people across the Tees Valley, has been officially recognised for its commitment to excellent customer service.

The Customer Service Excellence Standard, which Vela has recently been awarded, is a Government initiative that aims to promote and recognise public services that are efficient, effective and excellent.

Its mark is awarded to companies and organisations that put customers first, give high levels of customer service, learn from compliments and feedback and provide a range of services and information. The CSE standard also assesses performance on delivery of services, friendliness, timeliness, staff attitude and information.

The prestigious accreditation follows a rigorous inspection that scrutinised all services across the housing group, which employs over 700 staff.

The assessment focused on services across Vela, which includes Tristar Homes and Housing Hartlepool, ranging from repairs and maintenance to neighbourhood management, customer involvement to investments and modernisations.

Key strengths highlighted in the inspector’s report included:

• Engagement and consultation with customers is central to the planning and service delivery processes across Vela

• There has been a steady increase in levels of satisfaction across all areas of service delivery within Tristar Homes and Housing Hartlepool and high levels of satisfaction with some areas of delivery, for example, repairs and maintenance

• There is a strong corporate commitment to customer focus that stems from the Vela Board, tenants and Senior Management Team

• Staff feel empowered to resolve problems on the front line and to suggest service improvements

• There is good partnership working that clearly benefits the customer

• There is an excellent understanding of the needs of customers, in particular the harder to reach and more vulnerable requiring additional support

• The work being carried out in relation to the impact on tenants of welfare reform indicates a high degree of awareness of the potential impact of Government policy on Vela’s customers

• There is a real commitment to speedily resolving and learning lessons from complaints

• Overall, there is good benchmarking of service delivery and quality and timeliness of service with other organisations

Tracey Rix-Mason, Head of Customer Involvement at Vela_,_ said: “This accreditation endorses the quality of our customer service and reflects how thorough our customer-focused policies and procedures are.

“The validation by an independent assessor is testament to the passion and dedication of our staff and our commitment to working in partnership with our customers and stakeholders for the good of our customers and the wider community.

“The Vela Group was only established two years ago and it is a fantastic achievement to have met the exacting standards prescribed in the Customer Service Excellence award in such a short space of time.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Recognition PR Business Team .