Video Case Study: Developing Ardenglen’s Customer Strategy

The housing association, which owns and manages almost 1,000 homes, wanted to strengthen its relationship with tenants and the wider community by developing a structured, evidence-based customer engagement strategy.

Through a collaborative process led by ARK’s consultant, Kirsty Wells, the project explored how Ardenglen could better capture tenant voices, understand diverse customer preferences, and align services with resident needs. This work included staff workshops, the design of a detailed tenant survey, and the creation of data tools to measure engagement outcomes—resulting in a customer strategy that reflects the association’s long-term commitment to delivering excellent, person-centred services.

Watch the full video below to find out how about our work and the thoughts of Ardenglen.

Below is the full transcript of the video:

Transcript:

David Byfield, Chief Executive, Ardenglen
I’m David Byfield, Chief Executive of Ardenglen Housing Association. We are based in the south of Glasgow and we’ve got 984 homes. We’re very much a community anchor organisation like every other RSL, and we’re central to our stock, so the community that we operate and serve is right round about us.

Suzanne Casey, Director of Customer Services, Ardenglen
Hi, my name is Suzanne Casey. I’m Director of Customer Services here at Ardenglen Housing Association. I’ve been here for almost 20 years believe it or not, and I’ve been Director of Customer Services for just over two years.

At Ardenglen, we have a dedicated Community Investment Team, I think this kind of shows that Ardenglen are more than just a housing provider. Our community investment team are responsible for running a food pantry. We’ve just recently opened up our community hub. We deliver financial inclusion services to our customers, and we also provide digital inclusion as well as community development.

David Byfield:
At Ardenglen, we place a huge importance on our customer communications, but we appreciated that we had a fragmented approach to that, that really needed some work done, and we ended up engaging with ARK and Kirsty to address that.

Suzanne Casey:
David and I attended an event in Bathgate back in November 2024. It was around tenant engagement. It was with one of our other partner organisations, CX Feedback. Kirsty was there on the day presenting on tenant engagement and you could tell she was really really passionate about that particular topic.

So we decided to reach out to Kirsty, post the event to have a discussion around our own requirements and to see whether we could maybe do some work together alongside ARK to develop this new strategy and to make it more bespoke to Ardenglen’s requirements.

Kirsty Wells, Assistant Director, ARK
When I started speaking to David and Suzanne, it was really clear that, as the Director of Customer Services and Chief Executive, they had a vision of how they wanted to hear the tenant and resident voice within Ardenglen, And as a result of that, we made a decision, fairly early on, that the strategy should be a customer strategy, not just talking about tenant participation.

Suzanne Casey:
Kirsty and I were really keen to develop a survey that could encompass the five key dimensions of customer service: experience, complaint handling, customer ethos, emotional connection, and ethics.

We were really keen to capture our customer preferences. We wanted to take into account the needs of the customer in terms of how do they want to communicate with us in future, as well as do they have any barriers in terms of how they can actually communicate with us, so that we had a good idea as to how those customers require to be communicated with in future.

Kirsty:
So one of the other things that’s become more common in the sector in the last couple of years is thinking about the customer segmentation and how you meet the needs of your customers, depending on how they live their lives in your homes. So their homes are your assets, but we always have to remember that people are living in those homes. So it was really important to think about how we could meet their needs and what we got staff to do when we did the staff workshop was to think about Ardenglen and Castlemilk as it is now, but where people might be in 3 to 5 years time.

So if we look ahead, how can we put engagement activities in place in Ardenglen now that will still meet those needs when the strategy gets reviewed in 3-5 years time.

Within ARK, we have an in-house data team and the team have built a Power BI dashboard, containing all the data that we collected through the tenant survey.

David Byfield:
We now feel that we can have better conversations with people on the topics that matter to them, and we can organise engagement events that are more suited to what our customers want, so it’s much more informed.

We’ve also utilised technology as well, better so we can engage with folk and measure how we are doing.

I would have absolutely no hesitation in working with ARK again, because the experience we’ve had in developing this strategy document has been fantastic. They have a very structured and logical approach that aligns with our thinking.

Customer Engagement Strategies for Scottish Housing Associations

The development of Ardenglen’s new customer engagement strategy demonstrates how targeted, data-led engagement can transform the relationship between housing associations and the people they serve. By focusing on communication, insight, and continuous improvement, Ardenglen has set a strong example for other Scottish housing providers looking to modernise their approach to customer experience and community engagement.

If your organisation is ready to enhance customer engagement and develop a strategy that truly reflects your tenants’ voices, get in touch with Kirsty Wells or the ARK Consultancy team.

Contact ARK Consultancy to discuss how we can help your housing association strengthen its connection with residents and deliver lasting social impact.

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