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‘How well do you know your residents?’: how one housing association is looking to change the face of resident engagement
Grand Union has overhauled its approach to resident engagement in recent years. Martin Hilditch finds out what it has learned and explores lessons for other landlords
“This is sector-leading work. It is game-changing.” If you have met Aileen Evans, chief executive of Grand Union Housing Group, you will know she is not typically someone given to hyperbole. So, it is worth paying attention when the former president of the Chartered Institute of Housing starts talking like a football commentator who has just witnessed a wonder goal.
“When I first saw this, I thought, ‘Shit, we [the sector] have been doing it wrong for 30 years,’” Ms Evans adds.
She is talking about the new approach her association has been taking to resident engagement over the past few years – introducing psychographic segmentation to help it understand residents’ needs better and improve customers’ experience. But what exactly is that and how has it helped Grand Union learn about its residents?
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Step forward Naomi Sweeting, director of customer experience and insight at Grand Union, who has since joined Places for People as its group head of research and insight. Ms Sweeting came to Grand Union with a wide variety of out of sector experience, including as senior research manager at Lloyds Banking Group.
It is fair to say that Ms Sweeting’s initial thoughts were not hugely enthusiastic about how the social housing sector approached engagement (a term she does not like). “It felt a bit behind the curve,” Ms Sweeting says of the general approach she found.
“What I observed when I joined [the sector] was a real lack of – I still think we are in this space – data maturity,” she states.
“No one’s doing proper analysis and analytics; they are just reporting things – ‘We’ve spent this. The average cost is this.’ That’s not how to do it. We’re not really looking at the outcomes and that is not connected to the customer experience.”
So, what is the approach that Ms Sweeting introduced? First, she says it is important to separate this from the social housing sector’s traditional use of segmentation, which might focus on people’s demographic attributes, such as age. A better starting point is to ask, ‘What does that person need?’
That is what Grand Union set out to discover. It surveyed 2,530 customers, getting them to respond to more than 50 statements and questions to gain insight into their lives, experiences, strengths and challenges.
The results gave Grand Union huge insight, revealing that more than two-thirds of its customers have at least one condition that affects their day-to-day life and a third have three or more conditions. These could be physical conditions such as heart disease or diabetes; mental health conditions such as depression or PTSD; or cognitive conditions such as learning disabilities, dementia or a brain injury. The landlord learned that 19% of its residents use some kind of mobility aid. This then led into conversations about “what homes we are building, what homes we’re providing”, Ms Sweeting says. Four per cent of its customers are unemployed, but 24% are retired, 5% are not working due to a long-term illness and 7% due to a disability.
“We know for Grand Union, 23% of our customers have a household income of less than £10,000 and 42% have a household income of less than £20,000,” Ms Sweeting adds. “So poverty is really important for us to understand. We’re not saying we can solve poverty, but I think we do have a responsibility to consider that contextually within our offer.”
This should inform the sector’s approach to things like providing flooring, for example, Ms Sweeting feels.
“[The sector] can say, ‘Oh, we’re all about social purpose and social value… Here’s your home.’ And we know customers are living like that [without carpets] and there is no way they can afford to do anything about it. Just saying it [‘we’re about social purpose’] is a bit disingenuous really,” she explains.
Other questions revealed information on customers’ potential needs. Around a third of residents did not feel able to maintain outdoor space or decorate, for example, and nearly 60% struggle with DIY. “If we are providing vouchers for a paint pack and we now know that a third of our customers are unable to paint or decorate – not unwilling, unable – that has questions for me under equality legislation,” Ms Sweeting says.
The detailed answers from the survey enabled Grand Union to draw up broad customer segments. There are six in total, which it refers to as ‘deliver, flex, boost, reassure, assist and nurture’. Each group has a broad set of characteristics that may affect what they need from interactions with Grand Union and its services.
6
Customer segments Grand Union created using the data
28%
Residents who need services that fit their busy lives
2,530
Residents Grand Union surveyed to gain insight
Customers in the ‘deliver’ segment, for example, which represent 22% of customers, typically have no major health issues, are very likely to be employed and are good money managers. This group is largely self-sufficient, so the expectation is that service delivery should be efficient and professional and largely digital first. There may be an opportunity to offer this group additional paid-for services.
‘Flex’ customers, 18% of the total, are typically a bit older – age 65-plus – and most have at least one health issue, often age-related. Broadly speaking, it means this is a group which may need a service that flexes to meet their changing needs and circumstances over time.
‘Boost’ residents – 28% of the total – are likely to be in employment, are more likely to feel stretched and time-poor and need services that fit around their busy lives.
While ‘reassure’ residents – 16% – are on top of their bills, they are more likely to feel anxious or depressed and be struggling financially. Eighty-seven per cent of them said they worry a lot about the future and 82% said they had little or no savings. Only 9% of this group have no conditions that affect their daily lives.
“We need to adopt much more of a non-judgemental and empathic approach, [as] they are much more likely to be in arrears,” Ms Sweeting explains.
For example, this might mean instead of simply sending an arrears letter, Grand Union might check that things are OK. Even better, it is thinking about creating financial assistance teams. “It’s almost like we try and step in at crisis point [as a sector], rather than try to offer support earlier on,” Ms Sweeting adds.
The ‘assist’ segment – 9% – are residents likely to be struggling with their health and are reliant on others. Sixty-eight per cent said they find it difficult to ask for help and nearly a third find it difficult to understand financial information, with 27% finding reading difficult. They are more likely to need a proactive and supportive service, designed to reflect their capabilities.
‘Nurture’ customers – 7% – struggle with multiple issues. Fifty-eight per cent find reading difficult, and 91% say they become overwhelmed easily. Fifty-seven per cent have both a physical and mental health condition that affects their lives on a daily basis, and 18% have a mental, physical and cognitive condition. There are strong equality considerations in service and policy development for these residents. Again, a proactive and supportive service is crucial.
Thought should be given to the environment where communication takes place. “There can be real sensory overload issues for things like any kind of cognitive disorder,” Ms Sweeting explains. “People really struggle with situations that are loud or bright, and it just becomes overwhelming for them.”
The findings raise all sorts of questions for service delivery in the sector. For example, 10% of all customers said they ignore letters that look official (as many as 43% in the nurture segment). “That’s 10% service failure we’ve got baked in to any process that relies on its customers [to open letters],” Ms Sweeting says. Of course, this does not say what the right answers are for service delivery, but it enables the organisation to start asking more informed questions, as well as trial different communication approaches.
“What this gives us is a set of tools to understand customers, to deliver better services in a way that I have not come across before,” chief executive Ms Evans says.
This is something the sector needs to think about, she adds. “We’ve been listening to capable people who articulate their views [in typical involvement structures],” Ms Evans says. “What this tells us [as a sector] is that there is a whole bunch of other people who we don’t hear from who need something different. What we are trying to do is the ‘something different’.”
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