Platform Pledges
Platform recognises the importance of providing quality services to our customers. To help ensure we do this we wanted to create a set of service standard that would show customers exactly what they can expect from us.
The aim of the project was to seek customers views on which areas of service should be included within the standards and to ensure that they were clear and easy to understand once they were written.
What we asked
To develop the pledges we took a collaborative approach with customers and colleagues working together in a variety of ways to ensure that customer views were at the heart of the final document.
We ran a customer survey on Platform Voices, this asked questions including:
- What areas of service were most important to be included (such as communication, repairs timescales and complaints performance.
- What was most important in terms of their presentation
- How the final document should be shared with customers.
We also took paper copies of this survey out to some of our independent living schemes.
What people told us
We had 115 responses to our survey, either online or in person. Overall customers told us that the pledges should:
- Ensure a good service for customers
- Show that we are listening to customers and using their feedback
- They should focus on Communication and Repairs and Maintenance targets
- Be clear and easy to understand
Customers fed back that they thought the pledges would be best shared online, but there should be a paper copy available on request.
How we improved
Using this feedback we created a first draft of our Platform Pledges in autumn 2024. The document focused on creating clear targets which have a clear focus on the key service areas customers said were most important to them, including communication, repairs and maintenance and listening and acting upon customer feedback.
The draft was then taken to our Customer Voice Panel and Customer Scrutiny Panel who reviewed the document during a workshop session.
Overall, the customers in workshop felt that the Pledges met customer expectations, were clear and easy to understand and they gave clear, measurable targets. There were some amendments suggested within the workshop to ensure that customers to could find relevant information easily. Additionally it was agreed that we would create two versions of the document, to reflect the differences between tenancy types.
A final version of the Platform Pledges is available Here
