Complaints: from your point of view
By Steven, from the Customer Complaints Panel
Hello, I'm Steven, an involved customer on the Customer Complaints Panel (CCP).
I would like to take a moment of your time to introduce the customer complaints panel, tell you about what we do and also provide you with an update on our recent CCP activities.
What does the customer complaints panel do?
The CCP serves as a valuable advocate to customers who have filed a complaint and are dissatisfied with the outcome.
My role, and that of the CCP, is to provide an impartial and objective perspective on a complaint, offering a fresh set of eyes to evaluate the situation.
By considering the complaint from the customer's point of view, the CCP acts as a critical friend to the organisation and provide suggestions and solutions that Stonewater may not have considered.
It's very important to note that the CCP can only intervene after the customer has exhausted Stonewater's internal complaints procedure and before the matter is referred to the Housing Ombudsman. At the CCP, we strive to ensure that customers' complaints are heard and resolved in a fair and timely manner.
What we do as a panel and how we do it
Our main objective as the CCP is to evaluate the responses received to customer complaints, along with the policies, processes, and supporting evidence provided by Stonewater.
We conduct a thorough assessment of whether Stonewater has been fair and reasonable in its response to the customer, while also ensuring that it has followed its own internal procedures.
Our role as an impartial mediator allows us to bridge the gap between the customer and Stonewater, helping to identify unique and effective solutions while acting as a 'critical friend' to Stonewater.
We also make recommendations to put things right in a way that best suits the individual case, using our team's naturally inquisitive nature to make objective decisions based on the evidence presented to us.
What have we been doing?
Over the past 18 months, we have accomplished significant progress in our efforts to improve services and enhance customer satisfaction.
Our notable achievements include completing 15 reviews, providing 22 personal recommendations to customers, and offering 52 service improvement recommendations to Stonewater.
We also surveyed customers to gauge their opinions about having a CCP, and the feedback we received was overwhelmingly positive.
Customers reported to us feeling reassured and valued by the CCP, which has helped us to establish greater trust and confidence.
In addition, we are proud to share with you that we have successfully recruited new members to our team, and currently, have six active CCP participants.
As part of the feedback loop, we play a critical role in ensuring that the customer's voice is heard and that their feedback is used to improve Stonewater's services.
The future for us
We’ll continue to listen, learn and provide feedback with updates throughout the year and we will continue to share the learning outcomes from our reviews with Stonewater and work with them to embed the learning across the whole organisation
Also, the CCP will be recruiting new members, so if you have some skills or have some spare time then get involved and make a difference.
In summary, the future appears very bright and promising for all involved. I hope this has given you some really valuable insights into the purpose of the CCP at Stonewater.