Poole Housing Partnership, a Dorset based three-star ALMO, asked us to re-evaluate the business processes supporting access and customer care within their contact centre. They also wished to move away from their existing duty Housing Officer structure to a model where Housing Officers spend less time in the office and more structured time on estates to deal with issues much more rapidly. To facilitate this change the contact centre would need to resolve the bulk of housing management enquiries at first point of contact and where required make appointments for housing and technical staff.

To fulfil the brief we carried out a desktop review, followed by site visits which included discussions with staff at all levels and PHP’s partnering contractors. We provided a detailed report and action plan which the organisation began to implement immediately. Although not part of the original brief we included a review of their website from a customer perspective and a number of recommendations in that regard were included in the action plan submitted. On re-inspection PHP retained its three-star status and has acknowledged that our work contributed to its continuing success.