It's not often I leave a meeting and think 'I must write about that'

Although I knew we had tenancy services I don't think I'd considered what this actually meant. I don't really go to meetings where discussion about what we do comes down to individual cases but this meeting opened my eyes to what these services actually mean for our customers and why what we do really matters. 

Being at Bolton at Home for less than a year I sometimes think I'll never get used to the slower pace of change, the endless bureaucracy or ex-local authority culture. However I don't think there are many private sector landlords who would consider so carefully whether a tenancy was suitable for someone or not, make regular visits to ensure problems were addressed early on or create relationships with families to allow us to understand them and provide the right support. 

In the context of cuts and staff shortages there were extra meetings arranged to allow tenants to feel happy with services, time taken to arrange cleaning and food parcels and clean bedding left on the doorsteps of vulnerable people. Caseloads discussed seemed to me to be more than enough to do let alone allowing staff much time to be going the extra mile. 

From a communications point of view (which is of course why I was there in the first place) it was so important to hear how we are going the extra mile and also to get an insight into why so many people tell me they are too busy to spend time on social media when they attend the training. 

But before anyone in housing services think they're let off the hook I'm now keener than ever that they tell people about what they're doing. It's far more positive and more interesting than I thought it would be and although many people working in housing might think this is run of the mill there will be many more people out there to whom this would be news. 

And for me it was a useful reminder of why the bright lights of the private sector might not be all they're cracked up to be. 

Meeting people in supermarkets

As it is now just over two weeks until we leave for Quezon City, Manila it might be a good time to explain how all this came about...

So...  in August I spent three days standing in the foyer of Morrisons collecting for the charity. If you've never done this before I can't explain how incredibly boring it is and how it saps your enthusiasm for both your cause and human kind simultaneously.

If you have done this you can imagine how nice it was to meet someone who had time to stop for a chat, and was both interested and interesting. Peter turned out to be a member of Bury Rotary club and as we stood in the way of people getting their trolleys he gave me some tips and shared experience from his time managing the Rotary shoebox scheme.

It was a few weeks later Peter got back in touch and introduced me to the Rotary Group Study Exchange. This is to quote the website 'a unique cultural and vocational exchange opportunity' a chance for people working under the loose remit of 'local government' to stay in Manila for a month, make visits to work places similar to their own and gain an understanding of a new working culture.

After completing the forms and Peter securing the sponsorship of Bury Rotary club for my application I was put forward, interviewed and accepted for the exchange in December.

There's been a lot to do since then, with minor panic around my having to apply for a new passport, then visa and only getting the visa through this week, and the departure date has really crept up quickly. Still I've had almost all the jabs I need, have put my shiny new passport in a safe place and am beginning to think about what it might actually be like.

Again through Peter I've been able to meet a lovely couple who have lived and worked in Manila and get tips on what I need to do and see along with advice about what to take with me which has been great. The vocational visits are lined up but with no social housing as such it will be interesting to see how it all works.

Visits include the Quezon City Urban Planning Department, National Housing Department housing projects and the International Red Cross along with UNTV for Rotary Hour.

Having never been that way before I'm not sure what to expect but I'm going with my normal plan of do no research and hope for the best. I have however been promised excellent 3G signal so am hoping I'll be tweeting and blogging throughout.

If anyone does have any 'must see's in Manila please let me know.

Catching up

Watching a recording of last week's Creative Virtual webinar: 'A New Customer Service Paradigm: Customers are Now Demanding Self-Service Options and Why You Must Adapt' raised some interesting points about how far we should be taking our multi-channel approach.

Although I'm a huge advocate of us looking to global leaders not just leaders in UK housing there has to be a  limit. Although IVR (Interactive voice response) seems like a tool that is being widely adopted among the big corporates I'm not sure it would work for us at the moment.

This session also highlighted how far behind we are in terms of customer access with chat and email being incorporated into call centres in 1996.

This was incidentally the year I started secondary school and if I remember rightly a year or two before I had a mobile phone. I don't think at that point I had an email address and think web chat would have been far beyond my imagination. If memory serves me correctly this is only slightly after my mum professed the opinion that the internet would never catch on whilst we did homework on Encarta.

Another eye opener was social media being incorporated into call centres in 2008. A quick trawl of my timeline tells me it was July 2008 I joined Facebook making me a very late but enthusiastic adopter.

Now we can all agree the internet has caught on where now? Someone asked me at a project meeting what was the 'next big thing'. Having just been to a seminar on digital and comms I was able to talk about augmented reality and RFID both of which I can see becoming really useful tools for housing in the future.

But if we consider that we're only now looking at introducing live chat into our contact centre that puts us 16 years behind the leaders in this field. Given that I wouldn't have dreamed of some of the technology we now see as everyday I'm not sure I can imagine where we'll be in 16 years time.

I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that it will include the huge transparent video walls you see on CSI. And with creator Antony Zuiker putting this only two years behind the times four years ago I hold high expectations for our new offices!


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