Supporting Valleys to Coast Housing to improve processes

ARK Consultancy and Valleys to Coast worked tirelessly, and through our support, V2C has significantly improved response times, customer communication, and service efficiency. To discuss this journey, we sat down with Joanne Oak, Chief Executive at V2C, and Kieran Colgan, Director at ARK Consultancy, to talk about the impact of this collaboration.

Watch the full video below to hear directly from Joanne and Kieran about the improvements made.

Below is the full transcript of the conversation for easy reading.

Transcript:

Joanne Oak, Chief Executive, Valleys to Coast:
Hello, I’m Joanne Oak. I’m Chief Executive of Valleys to Coast, we’re a South Wales based housing association. We manage 6000 homes in Bridgend County Borough Council and surrounding areas. Our purpose, we’re really rooted in safe and happy. So we talk about safe and happy homes, safe and happy places and safe and happy customers. And we really hit some challenges in the way that we are providing safe and happy homes and managing our customer expectation.

We had particular operational challenges around our damp mould and condensation. We had a backlog of, repairs. We were very slow in our response time to our customers. We recognised this and knew that we needed to get some professional, independent advice to help us take a laser sharp focus to see how we were delivering our operations. And that’s why we had to call on ARK to come in and help support.

Kieran Colgan, Director, ARK Consultancy:
When you’re reviewing a service or an organisation, it’s generally easy to identify what is going wrong, but what we try and do at ARK is not only identify what is going wrong, but why. In this way, we can work with our clients to build a plan that not only just papers over the cracks, but lays solid foundations for future sustainable improvement.

Joanne Oak:
We recognised very early on that our processes were inefficient. It was becoming costly in terms of how we were responding to our repairs. We could really see the satisfaction of our customers, declining, in terms of how we were just, being able to respond to our complaints as they were raising. So we were very open and transparent with our customers to ask them to come forward to raise issues relating to damp, mould and condensation.

But our approach in terms of how we dealt with them were ineffective. So ARK coming in and working with our team to do a full end to end review of our processes helped us in terms of doing our prioritisation, looking for us to improve our communication and manage our customers, and for us to be able to make sure that our processes were much more efficient.

And we had a backlog of 57% of our repairs, which were then becoming seen as being emergency focused, and what we want to try and do is see how could we become much more proactive as an organisation. And again, this is where ARK came in to help us with that prioritisation.

Kieran Colgan:
To drive improvements, organisations have got to be relentlessly focused on what matters to their customers. V2C have been incredible in this respect. Organisations also have to be brave, be willing to take and stick to what sometimes are very tough decisions. Again, V2C have been outstanding in this regard.

Joanne Oak:
ARK’s intervention and support has been transformative for us. You know, them coming in, having that independent review, talking to our colleagues, has really been, helpful and instrumental, helping us prioritise how we need to take the needs of customers into context when we’re looking at prioritisation, making sure that our processes are much more efficient and much more cost effective in terms of our responses and for us to be able to have better and improved communication for our customers.

What that has delivered is that we are able to, as soon as the customer now contacts us about damp, mould and condensation, we have an immediate response to that rather than them having to wait for a surveyor to go out. And then we’re able to put the appropriate repairs action in place.

It’s given the teams much more confidence in terms of managing the expectations of the customers and being able to be really clear and concise about what needs to happen in our customer’s homes. And what I’m really pleased to see is that we’ve now had a internal audit review of our processes for damp, mould and condensation, and we’ve got an improved assurance in terms of where we are as an organisation and that’s been as a real direct result of us partnering with ARK and having their insights drive those improvements.

Kieran Colgan:
Where we are today. V2C has a clear plan to follow. We’ve already seen significant improvements in what and how people do things. Processes have improved the way we manage. Performance has also improved. V2C is well placed to deliver better outcomes for the people that really matter, its customers.

Joanne Oak:
This is just the beginning of our commitment to continued improvement. And that is through our support with ARK, who will continue to guide us and support us through these improvements.

By working together, ARK and V2C have transformed service delivery, ensuring that customers receive faster, more effective responses to their needs. This collaboration highlights the power of strategic consultancy in driving real, measurable improvements in housing services.

Contact Kieran Colgan here to discuss how we can work with your organisation to improve processes for your customers.