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Members of Qualis leadership team presented customer insights at the latest Overview and Scrutiny Committee.
View the webcast
Qualis Management
Qualis Management was set up in 2020 and is now in its third year. It carries out repair and maintenance to the council’s stock of general needs houses, flats, maisonettes and sheltered housing for older residents.
Qualis Management supports 6,253 homes and takes approximately 24,000 repair calls per year. Tenants and leaseholders directly contact Qualis through a dedicated call centre with call back option and webchat features. Calls are recorded for quality monitoring.
Customer focus
Group Managing Director, Sacha Jevans and Managing Director of Qualis Management, Ben Johnson, acknowledged that Qualis sometimes gets it wrong, but most often gets it right. Customer focus is the central driver for behaviours and values, with many compliments and high customer satisfaction levels.
Ben highlighted 3 areas of focus identified by customers through the complaints process.
- Length of time to complete repairs
- Parts and materials availability and supply
- Communications
Epping Forest District Council holds monthly performance review meetings with Qualis.
High demand during the recent severe winter weather presented challenges with contact centre calls doubling in December. Further strategic, councillor and portfolio holder contacts vary from a range of weekly to quarterly meetings.
Developing the customer experience
Looking forward to the next 12 months, Qualis is working to further develop the customer experience, increase apprenticeships and explore wider commercial opportunities.
Councillors raised a number of questions on:
- Repairs that need approval – generally costing over £600
- Financial savings
- Productivity gains
- Value for money
- ‘Insourcing’ – employing people directly rather than through sub-contractors
- Lessons learnt
- Complaint handling between the Council and Qualis
- Customer service decision delays
- Demands on staff and staff perceptions of Qualis
- Criteria for vulnerability and emergency callout
- Recruitment
- Investors in People accreditation
- Customer satisfaction and surveys
- Meeting the chairman of the board
- Resourcing spikes in demand
- Amazon Connect call centre software
- Boiler servicing
Other items
Other items covered by Overview and Scrutiny were its own work programme, and forthcoming business of the Cabinet.
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