Hoop Two! - If you are able to speak to a customer adviser

If you were able to speak to a customer service advisor, what would you expect? A timeframe for when you could expect your issue to be resolved, some empathy, ownership, correct escalation? Would you want your concern to be handled correctly? Of course you would.

We all expect this basic level of service. This is why we pay a service charge to our simply brilliant landlord, we pay this charge in exchange for GreenSquareAccord being able to uphold their service level agreement.

Yesterday, several residents in Oxford were able to speak to customer service advisors regarding a fault caused by work being conducted onsite. However this demonstrated another hoop that needed to be circumnavigated.

The issue - all external and communal doors unlocked

This has been an issue in the past. If you have a curious nature, you can read about it here and if you’re still hungry for more, here.

In brief there have been issues with drug abuse, threats of assaults and actual assaults, thefts, and acts of vandalism. You might assume that any report to GreenSquareAccord informing them that residents were at risk would be classed as an emergency. You would think.

Due to the outage with the phones GreenSquareAccord were only dealing with emergency issues, which of course this was. However due to a lack of training, a failure to understand the issue and its history, a toxic working environment, and yet another breakdown in internal communication residents were told:

… won’t class this as an emergency job as your front door is lockable. So they will get in contact with their team and get that booked out as soon as they can in the near future, but I can’t guarantee that will be within the next 24hrs, okay?

Dan - GreenSquareAccord customer service team

At this point Dan was reminded of the ongoing issues and how the timeframe of sometime ‘in the near future’ was unacceptable, to which he replied:

It’s with a contractor and I’m not in control of that situation.

Knowing how these issues can fester, a request to have this raised to an official complaint was made.

Is that a complaint about me or our contractor?

As always this was a complaint being levied at GreenSquareAccord. The residents don’t have a contract with the team GreenSquareAccord have chosen to carry out work onsite; Dan’s inability to display empathy, understand the ongoing issues, raise the issue correctly and the manner in which he spoke to a concerned resident were and are the fault of GreenSquareAccord.

To quote an Oxford residents in relation to GreenSquareAccords classification of what is or isn’t an emergency:

I get that the roof is not falling in and the building is not collapsing, but I would assume that all external doors not locking properly overnight should be treated at least as 'medium priority'?

Is it really possible that they only have two settings: we don't care/we'll rush it?

If you are able to contact GreenSquareAccord via telephone, you then have to convince their customer service agent, and their contractor, that the issue is an emergency.

GreenSquareAccord have some great customer service advisors who are doing a very difficult and (I should imagine) soul destroying job. The agents who are customer focused will always try their best to provide an acceptable level of service. Unfortunately those who aren’t customer focused and haven’t been successfully trained will inherit the toxic mindset, and with GreenSquareAccord desperately trying to rebuild a new customer focused team a solid induction package must be in place!

Hoop Three! - Emails

So you haven’t been stopped by the faulty phone system, you’ve spoken to an agent but weren’t able to convince them your issue was an emergency, now what?

Even when the phone systems are working, most of GreenSquareAccord generic replies warn you of a delay in responding:

Thank you for your email

Your enquiry has reached our Customer Service Team. We will aim to respond within two working days to let you know what will happen next.

We are currently experiencing a high volume of contact which may result in us taking longer than usual to come back to you.

Please be assured we have received your message and will respond as soon as possible. Thank you for your patience

If you have an emergency, please call 0300 111 7000.

Kind regards

Customer Services

And the pavlovian response to most email enquiries usually informs you that your email has been sent to another team who have X amount of days to reply to you, in most cases X equals seven working days.

The caveat to this response time is assuming that GreenSquareAccord don’t lose your email or that they haven’t placed you on a communication ban because you dared to raise issues, which makes GreenSquareAccord’s latest initiative, the voice of the customer, another non-starter before it’s even launched!

Hoop Four! - Social Media!

Almost there I promise! The last and final hoop is the world of social media. Here GreenSquareAccord can block you, fob you off with another generic response in the form of ‘DM us and we’ll get back to you!’ or they’ll ignore you!

Jump though all these hoops and…

You’ve made a call, you’ve raised it as a complaint, you’ve sent numerous emails, and you’ve posted the issue on social media sites, then and only then you might receive a response!

In conclusion

Why must it be so difficult?

Are GreenSquareAccord intentionally obtuse or is it just a byproduct or an ineffective team bogged down with too many of their own internal hoops?

Although Zoe’s email admits GreenSquareAccord were to blame for yet another job being incorrectly processed there is still a lack of an apology (and we know why that is). And of course, it’s 17:00 on a Friday and there wasn’t an update from Zoe.

I see the negative comments online and try to remain constructive in my criticism, yet it becomes harder and harder. We’ve seen the recruitment of a new Director of Corporate Affairs and Communications as well as a new Head of Communications and Marketing. Is this a step in the right direction, is Ruth Cooke assembling a dream team that can drive the required cultural change, and how long must us residents wait until basic customer communications can be streamlined and we can put away these hoops, these barriers to great customer service.

I’m not on the GreenSquareAccord payroll, I’m reporting the issues and providing a voice to many customers, yet they block, ignore and threaten me with legal action.

How shortsighted is that!