Notting Hill Genesis

Improving Customer Experience

The challenge

Prior to its merger with Notting Hill, the Housing Management service in Genesis Housing needed to ensure that their operating model could respond to the changes in the operating environment, but more importantly to the changes in need and expectation from their customers.

They outlined a series of objectives that would allow them to:

  1. Improve Customer Service for their 170,000 residents
  2. Improve and simplify the use of technology to provide a better online offer to customers
  3. Better support their frontline staff
  4. Drive savings from the non-value adding parts of the operating processes

This required a transformation of the current operational processes in parallel with improvements to the supporting technology.

Designed and embedded a new operating model and supported staff to own the change

The response

4OC put in place a team with experience of managing and transforming customer facing operations in a variety of settings including the housing sector.

We set out a clear plan to work with each team in the service to co-design a new Operating Model. This plan provided Notting Hill Genesis with a set of enabling activities that would support the transition of the teams from the existing to new ways of working, including changes in how staff and the business were managed.

We supported staff to own and drive the changes on an incremental basis and helped ensure that the new ways of working could be tested, and that information could be systematically collected to help with informed decision making on future changes or investment, making the business more responsive. 

What ensured that the changes took hold is that we emphasised the importance of designing the new ways of working with the staff, leadership team and customers, building consensus and really getting to grips with the realities of our Housing Management ambitions.

The outcome

We delivered a clear Directorate Vision and Plan, a significant redesign of the organisational structure and refinement of the Operating Model. This was signed off by the Genesis senior team.

Genesis subsequently used 4OC to support the restructure and relocation of the Customer Service Centre, and also to implement a performance management framework across Housing Management. This has resulted in remarkable improvements in performance, customer and staff satisfaction, and fundamentally changed the culture to one totally focussed on performance and customer. 

Some key metrics include:

  • Sickness and staff turnover levels at a record low
  • On course to deliver the projected savings in year one.
  • Improvements in customer satisfaction from 76% to 83%
  • A significant reduction in stress levels (judged via stress risk assessments undertaken before and after the project)

The ‘working alongside’ approach helped Genesis to develop the internal capability for managing change and performance, which has turned out to be as valuable as the design of the new ways of working.