Two years ago, Orbit set itself some pretty tough targets. These sat underneath its 2020 vision, which is around improving the quality of their customers' lives, and helping them create thriving and empowered communities where they live.
The targets took into account what they thought the social and economic environment would be like for the people that live in their properties.
It’s a very powerful message and also quite simple, so the whole of the organisation, from the very bottom to the very top, could understand and buy into what Orbit wants to achieve.
The key priority for Orbit, regarding customer experience, is to ensure they have 75% of customer transactions online by 2020 and also to provide a range of tailored services which satisfy 90% of their customers.
These are big challenges for Orbit, given that they previously had less than 3% of contacts online and a very creaky website offer. As well, satisfaction was around 75% and going in the wrong direction.
To achieve the 90% satisfaction ambition set, Orbit recognised it needed to make a change in the customer service it offered.
How customer feedback was handled at Orbit
Orbit used to rely on a series of lengthy, in-depth telephone interviews. These were designed to test if customer satisfaction was up to the standard delivered.
But they were long and in-depth. It took a long time to get information back to the organisation; on occasion, it could be six to eight weeks after the initial interaction that Orbit would find out whether a customer was satisfied, meaning the impact of that feedback was lost.
In the organisation, there was a feeling that if things had gone wrong, "it's gone, it's too late to fix it. We'll move on, and we'll do the next one right."
The feedback lost its impact to the organisation. Plus, a lot of staff didn’t engage with it. It was certainly, in the end, just about delivering a number in a box on a scorecard. A tick box exercise, rather than a way to genuinely understand the real voice of the customer.
Orbit reviewed its processes and procedures around gathering feedback. The organisation researched what was going on in the sector and, more importantly, what was going on outside of the industry. They wanted to understand what other people were doing to measure customer experience and what technologies they were using.
They wanted to try and offer a multichannel experience for customers, giving them the opportunity to provide feedback through the channel of choice. The old feedback system relied on a one-size-fits-all approach. Customers might have said they wanted to communicate through email, but they’d be contacted by phone and asked for their opinion.
They needed to do it to differently, more innovatively, and indeed put the voice of the customer at the centre of the organisation.
Now, Orbit has implemented a range of different options, including SMS and email. It means they can tailor feedback requests to the customer’s preferred channel. It’s much more convenient for the customer and shows the organisation is listening.
With this new approach, Orbit has already received over 44,000 items of feedback from its customers. This shows an enormous amount of engagement, with response rates between 20 - 25% across its three main feedback channels.
But also, it's much wider than just having a target number in a box. Orbit recognised that its people and the way they worked needed to change. This meant a significant focus on employee engagement, as getting happy, engaged employees that deliver excellent services help to ensure customers are satisfied.
Having more feedback also allowed Orbit to refocus on the important things to its customers and not just look at the things it assumed were important. Organisations can be quite naïve in thinking they know what customers want, but the real-time feedback solution gives Orbit a genuine voice of the customer, delivered straight to the front line.
Orbit measures its progress towards the targets every quarter, which enables the organisation to maintain the momentum created through the launch. It’s done a lot of work, with both internal staff, stakeholders and customers, to make sure everybody understands what the organisation is trying to achieve.
To learn more about how Orbit has achieved up to 28% response rates, reduced the number of advisors on improvement plans by 70%, and recorded a 20% saving on their feedback budget click below!
