Don’t take my word for it!

In GreenSquareAccord’s own words, here is how they learn from complaints.

So we are all on the same page. A complaint isn’t wanted by any of us, but when one arises, it can be an opportunity to learn from the mistake. It is a lesson that will help GreenSquareAccord build more robust procedures and ensure this issue can be correctly dealt with going forward. We are definitely on the same page!

Unfortunately, we now have to discuss KPIs (Key Performance Indicators)

The problem with KPIs…

For those of you not familiar with this term, here is a very brief intro. Key Performance Indicators enable businesses (regardless of sector) to measure performance over time for specific objectives. They offer measurable targets for your teams to meet which in turn, enables you to drive performances, provide bonuses, and ensures you are meeting your own actionable achievements. They enable your business to move, as a whole, towards your strategic goal.

If you run a sales centre, you may set the KPI for your sales team to convert eight leads into sales per day. The corresponding KPI for your finance department might be to ensure that all invoices were raised within a set time period of that sale being closed.

So far no real problem with KPIs…

However, if your sales team weren’t reaching their KPIs, you could offer training, better leads, or perhaps manage some of your underperforming sales agents out of the business. Perhaps your sales manager was the reason why their team kept missing their KPIs, perhaps it was time to re-think their position as sales manager. This is where your sales manager might get creative when reporting KPIs back to management. If you are too reliant upon the data gathered from the KPIs, and too far removed from your frontline staff, this is where problems occur.

To establish if there has been any creative number-fudging going on, let’s look at GreenSquareAccord’s published annual report.

GreenSquareAccord Annual Report - Learning from complaints!

GreenSquareAccord have made this report available to us all via the website in the form of an ‘interactive flipbook!’ For those of you who wish to avoid the fanfare, you can download the PDF version here. The file name hasn’t been changed, this is version 2 of the final version, we can but wonder how many iterations this went though before being shared.

So what can we learn from the this first paragraph?

As we’d hoped GreenSquareAccord want to learn and put things right, and they see (as they should) complaints as a valuable tool in achieving this.

So what can we learn from the this second paragraph?

19% (based on their published amount of homes being 25,000) of GreenSquareAccord residents felt the need to complain in the period of 2021-22.

The next sentence is a little ambiguous and could be accused of lacking the necessary insight for most residents to follow. This is strange in itself as in the email to all residents linking to this report GreenSquareAccord wrote:

We believe it's important to be open and transparent with our customers and our annual report gives you an account of how we performed across all our services

Let’s pull from it what we can.

Of the 4,843 complaints made; 4,097 (or 84%) were resolved at the first stage of the GreenSquareAccord complaint process, the first of a three stage complaint procedure process.

However 674 (or 16%) had to be handled by the Customer Care Team - it’s a strange collective noun this one as if GreenSquareAccord treated their residents with care, no such team would be required. 16% of all complaints raised need to be escalated to the second stage of the complaint process.

Stage three is again a little ambiguous and don’t take just my word for it. The Housing Ombudsman noted this too, as I’ll share later. Here is how it is written on GreenSquareAccord’s published complaint process page:

Executive Review

We will consider escalation to a director to review whether the case was handled fairly and reasonably. (10 working days)

This isn’t your choice, they (GreenSquareAccord) will consider escalation. Regardless of who escalates, according to GreenSquareAccord’s own figures, a mere 1.5% of the 4,843 complaints were reviewed at Director level, and of these only six were referred or escalated to the Housing Ombudsman. I’ll tell you later why this figure likely to be incorrect too.

Congratulations to the 19% of residents who made it to the first stage!

It’s harder than you think. And this is why I suspect the figure of just 4,843 doesn’t truly represent the true number of unhappy residents who asked for their issue to be escalated to a complaint.

Here we’ll look at how GreenSquareAccord make it hard for residents to complain.