Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust nominated for National Award in Customer Service

Tuesday 5th May 2009

The Vale of Aylesbury Housing Trust has been shortlisted for the prestigious Housing Excellence Awards in the Customer Service category. The list of six finalists was drawn from entries nationwide and includes some of the oldest, largest and most top-performing housing organisations in the country.

The entry was based around the work the Trust has done to improve customer services by introducing a Contact Centre. The Customer Advisors work with their colleagues in different departments to ensure that they have a broad understanding of the Trust\'s work - affectionately known as \"The Knowledge\". This, along with the newly installed £1.2million information system enables the Centre to answer 93% of enquiries without putting the caller through to another person something residents have asked for and the Trust has been passionate to achieve.

However, it isn\'t just new technology that has helped the Trust reach these heights. The judges were equally impressed by the little things that the Centre offers. For example, computer terminals are available for residents with no web access to enable them to surf price comparison sites and save money. The Trust also provides various disabled adaptors including pen grips, magnifiers and templates to help residents\' sign or read documents, and have multi lingual advisors as well as a translation service available.

Matthew Applegate, Chief Executive of the Trust said, \"Everyone at the Trust is excited at being nominated in such an important category. This is the first time that we have made a bid for an award and to be shortlisted for Customer Service is a testament to all the hard work that has taken place to improve the customer experience with the Trust. Our residents have been instrumental in helping us develop by providing us with great feedback and suggestions for improvement. Being such a new organisation, getting the nomination is brilliant for us, but winning against such strong competition would be phenomenal!\" The winner will be announced at the Housing Excellence Awards Ceremony, being held at the Palace Hotel in Manchester on May 13th.

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