Service Quality

Connect Housing is an RSL that provides housing and housing management services to over 3,000 households across West Yorkshire.  The majority of services is paid for from rental income and customers do not usually pay again to access a particular service.

The Anti-social behaviour management service is one of those housing management services.  Staffed by three Housing Officers and one Senior, it receives and manages reports of ASB from customers and anyone else living, working in or visiting the areas in which Connect operates.  The ASB service is not open to competition (people cannot choose to use the service of another RSL), though customers may choose not to use it at all or to use an agency like the Police for certain cases.  The service deals with around 300 new reports each year, ranging from noise nuisance to incidents of violence, drug dealing etc.

Though service standards are in place, the focus is on:

1. definitions of types of ASB
2. Connect’s approach to the management of ASB
3. the speed with which the association should respond to certain categories of a report.

The standards include limited information that would enable a customer to assess service quality.  Though levels of satisfaction are measured, Connect has not asked customers what is important to them in the service and does not benchmark it against other organisations.  Service improvement is ad-hoc and unfocused.

This paper outlines how certain theories about quality management and particular tools for quality improvement apply to the ASB service and discusses reasons why an application of some aspects of the theory may be difficult.  It also makes recommendations about how service quality may be defined and measured in the future and about new approaches to service improvement.