Tenant Satisfaction Measures: a close look at complaints
We’re now halfway through the year in terms of gathering your feedback through the Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs). Customers are selected randomly by IFF Research, an independent research organisation, to take part in a short survey.
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Your latest feedback and our responses to it are available now
Compared to the end of March 2025, the majority of scores for our rental customers have increased several percentage points, but there have been a few fluctuations both up and down over the most recent three months. The same can be said for our shared ownership customers.
One area that has drawn our attention, due to scores either not improving or dropping slightly over the last six months, is satisfaction with complaints handling. The scores are not where we want them to be, for either our rental or home ownership customers. It is disappointing to see the home ownership score drop again since the end of June.
We want to find out more about how customers feel about our complaint handling. However, when we carry out the TSMs we often find we have more customers saying they have made a complaint than the numbers of formal complaints we have actually received. We decided to speak to those customers to better understand this. Our aim was to understand from those who have made a formal complaint how they felt about the way their complaint was handled and to find out more about what customers may be classing as a complaint when they answer the TSM survey questions.
We have a panel of customers, called Resolve, who scrutinise our management of complaints who were perfectly placed to be the best people to contact these customers to find out more.
Resolve had conversations with 37 customers with varying degrees of satisfaction, to understand both the nature of the complaints they made, and the handling process. We thought it would be more beneficial to learn about what went well through the complaint handling process from those who were satisfied, as well as what didn’t go so well from those who were dissatisfied.
Resolve found the following:
- Customers were eager to share their experiences
- Understandably, some of the dissatisfaction came from the fact they had needed to make their complaint in the first place
- Many customers did not know the stage of their complaint (either stage one or two), indicating that a formal complaint may not have been raised
- Many customers reported issues not fully being resolved
- Some customers wanted to discuss anti-social behaviour (ASB). This suggests they may be classing the ASB they have experienced as a complaint
- Minimal concerns were raised about how complaints were handled, indicating that the actual complaint handling process is working well.
What are we doing now
This exercise has provided some really useful insights into both the ways customers may think about what constitutes a complaint, as well as giving us valuable information on how customers feel their complaints are being handled. We are likely to repeat this exercise in the future, alongside reviewing feedback from the TSMs and more specific surveys that are sent out to customers when a formal complaint has been closed. This will enable us to keep a close eye on the way we handle complaints to ensure that we are doing everything we can to make an often difficult situation as smooth as possible.
