Customer survey results

Tenants know best!

Winner Julie Hewitt
Counting her winnings: Julie Hewitt shows off her £200 gift voucher prize.

Every year we send out a customer satisfaction survey to every Northwards tenant. Everyone who fills in the survey and sends it back is in with the chance of winning £200 in gift vouchers!

This year’s lucky winner was Julie Hewitt of Culcheth Lane, Newton Heath. Julie has a grandchild on the way and is looking forward to spending her vouchers on some lovely new baby clothes!

Barry Connor of Hopkinson Road, Higher Blackley was our second prize winner of £100 vouchers and John Carter of Mortlake Drive, Newton Heath took home £50 vouchers. Well done everyone!

So look out for the survey again next year – it could be you going on a fantastic shopping trip!

Here is a breakdown of our results:

Overall Service

83% of tenants are satisfied with the overall service provided by Northwards. We are over the moon with this result as it’s an improvement on 2008, where just 79% replied that they were satisfied. We had set ourselves a target of 80% so we’re really pleased we have exceeded our own expectations!

Customer Service Centre

88% were satisfied with the service they received during their last call to our customer service centre. This is another big improvement on the 2008 result of 83%, and reflects real improvements in the speed and quality of service provided. We are working with our customer service centre provider Manchester Working Limited to look at how we can do even better next year.

Neighbourhood and local area

76% are satisfied with the area they live. This is the same as the 2008 result. We think we can do better than this and so we have set ourselves a target of 80% for 2011. We are working with all our partners - in particular the police and Manchester Council - to tackle the issues which people tell us are most important in their area.

63% feel satisfied with their local environment: meaning we almost reached our target of 64%. We have raised the bar even further for our 2011 survey and we are hoping for a result of 70%. To help us achieve this we've made a number of changes to the way we look after the local environment - including introducing new service standards and putting extra resources into estate cleaning.

Antisocial Behaviour and Crime

More people than last year (60%) told us that they are confident that local agencies such as the Council, the police and Northwards are dealing with the antisocial behaviour and crime issues which matter most in their neighbourhood. And the number of people saying that antisocial behaviour is a problem in their area fell from 27% to 26%. It's good that these figures are moving in the right direction. But we recognise that there is still lots to do, and we'll be working with our partners in the Manchester Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnership to continue tackling the issues which you have told us matter most.

Resident Involvement

Two thirds (66%) of you were satisfied with the opportunities to get involved at Northwards. This is the same as last year's result. Although this compares well with other housing organisations, we'd like to do even better. So we have decided to send everyone a special “Resident Involvement” edition of the Northwards Natter in the New Year, to help raise awareness of the different opportunities available. We're also asking our Resident Involvement Forum for ideas about how to get even more residents involved - including using new technology such as text and emails. And we're getting our Tea Mobile trailer out on the estates even more, asking you for your views on how to improve your area. We hope this does the trick as we’ve set ourselves a target of 71% for our 2011 survey!

86% of you felt that we were good at keeping you informed about things that matter as a customer. We were pleased with this result as it’s a 5% increase on last year's result. We'll continue to use your feedback to improve the way we tell you what we are doing.

Thank you to everyone who returned the survey. You are really helping us to see where we need to work a bit harder. Look out for the 2010 survey, to be in with a chance of winning some great shopping vouchers!

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