Co-Ownership’s ICS journey

Delivering excellent Customer Service is extremely important to Co-Ownership.  In 2020 we joined The Institute of Customer Service (ICS) to enable us to build on our customer centric approach and benchmark our service experience with the best organisation in the UK.

We began with a First Impressions Course which identified 14 service improvement opportunities the organsiation could make to become more customer centric. These changes have been fully implemented and examples include:

• Improving our applications website to make it easier for customers to apply to Co-Ownership and keep track of their applications.
• Creating a knowledge sharing hub for team members so that everyone understands the end-to end process. This will help improve our service, increase the quality of our contact with customers, and build trust and confidence in the teams.

Developing Customer Service Professionals

Developing customer service professionals is a fundamental principle of ICS, and Co-Ownership fully embraced this by investing in a Third Level Managerial Qualification in Customer Service for our Customer Service Manager who was recently shortlisted for a UK wide award for customer service.

We wanted to embed a culture of customer service across our business so invested in coaching training for fifteen members of our team.  Each of those coaches is now supporting a member of our our staff to become an accredited customer service professional.

We’re part of the ‘Service with Respect’ campaign, an ongoing campaign from ICS ensuring that our people are treated with the same respect that we show our customers.

Benchmarking Studies

Part of our journey with ICS involved benchmarking our service against other organisations, using feedback from various stakeholder groups including our internal team members, customers and our industry partners.

In the ServCheck staff survey, 87% of staff completed the survey, and we scored 76.52. This is a very high score, with the All Sectors ServCheck Index being 75.09.

In the Business Benchmarking customer survey, we scored 86.6 on the Customer Satisfaction Index. This is an extremely high score, the UK all-sector average is 76.8.

Achieving these scores at our first assessment was exceptional as we ranked amongst the best in the UK. We were then invited by the ICS to go forward for full accreditation in December 2021 and became the only organisation in Northern Ireland to hold the ICS ServiceMark accreditation in February 2022.

Action Planning

Using the results from each of the surveys, we set about developing an action plan for change.

As the feedback was from staff, customers and stakeholders, we structured our feedback and actions using 4 key themes:

1: Reward, recognition & wellbeing

From staff engagement groups to recognition schemes and cost of living payments, reward, recognition and well-being was a priority for the working group.

2: Training, qualification, and induction

We embraced the training schemes available through ICS and other providers to ensure team members are well equipped to support customers with queries on their finances and cost of living.  A new induction process has also been introduced to embed the culture of Co-Ownership with new starts.

3: Benchmarking & engagement with external organisations

Regular meetings with lenders, government and other organisation allows us to share the work of Co-Ownership and how we can help more people become homeowners. When we ask for feedback from stakeholders and customers, we go back to them with updates on actions taken.

4: Customer focus

To show our commitment to excellent customer service, we developed our Customer Promises in 2022. Customers can expect us to do the right thing, get it right first time, and communicate with them and listen to their feedback. We ask for customer feedback through surveys issued at various stages of the customer journey.

Becoming accredited

Co-Ownership received the ServiceMark accreditation in February 2022. An assessor at the Institute of Customer Service commented, “I am delighted to recommend Co-Ownership as a worthy award recipient of The Institute of Customer Service ServiceMark Accreditation. Customers are at the heart of everything the team at Co-Ownership does and commitment to delivering great service to its customers runs through all areas of the company.

“Throughout the assessment, I saw a lot of pride in everyone I spoke with, in working for an organisation that is customer centric and in helping make their customers’ dreams come true – the dream of owning a home.”

Glynis Hobson, Director of Customer Services at Co-Ownership, says: “We are proud to lead the way in Northern Ireland in receiving accreditation from the Institute of Customer Service.  It is a testament to our commitment to delivering excellent customer support and is demonstrated every day by our people in all our customer interactions. We are passionate about looking after our people and in doing so enabling them to look after our customers.” 

We continue to strive towards excellent customer service in all our interactions with customers and stakeholders and focus on getting feedback to help us continue this journey.