Your questions answered...
Welcome to our brand new ‘Your Questions Answered’ feature. In every edition, our customer services experts Leanne Whalley and Ian Smith will get to the bottom of your questions and enquiries.
From Jane in Nottingham.
Thanks for getting in touch, Jane. We introduced the new contact us forms to make it easier for our customers to contact the right people specific to their enquiry.
Customers are able to select the subject linked to their reason for contacting us and either complete a form with the details of their enquiry or be taken directly to the relevant information on our website.
Existing customers can use the form to ask us about rent, new build repairs, tenancy queries and leaseholder questions. Customers can also use it to ask us about renting or buying from Longhurst Group and to enquire about our developments.
Now, these queries can then be directed to the people most appropriate to answer them.
Following their introduction, we’re carrying out a review to see how successful it has been and to implement any improvements that are identified. As part of this process, we’ll be asking for customer feedback to help us improve the customer experience.
From Steve in Birmingham.
Thanks for your question, Steve. We recognise the difficulties our customers have been experiencing in contacting our contractors.
Rest assured, we work closely with all our contractors to ensure that service standards are met and that calls are answered in a timely manner.
Mears have shown significant improvement from October to December 2019 and have seen their average wait times improve from 206 seconds to 66 seconds.
Lots of hard work is going on to improve this further to meet the agreed target of answering calls. In addition, we’re looking to launch the Mears portal soon, which will allow you to log and monitor your gas heating repairs and gas servicing appointments from your
My Account. We hope to launch this service in the summer and are excited by the convenience this will offer our customers.
Through our customer feedback, we’re also aware of the issues some of you experience when contacting Wates. We’re really sorry about this and recognise that improvements have to be made.
Wates have increased the number of call handlers, so we expect productivity to have increased and a reduction in your call wait times. Lots of proactive work is being done to improve the service offered to our customers. As ever, we’d like to thank you for your patience during this time and assure you that we listen to and value your feedback.