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Systems thinking is a topic that we regularly come across in the social housing sector which is why we’ve chosen it as the first topic in our new opinion section. Take a read and drop us a line, we’d love to hear your thoughts on the subject. Ross Fraser also mentions its complementary role as a performance tool in his article on the increasing role of benchmarking in the sector. He also hints at a future where benchmarking might become regulatory practice. Now surely you’ve all got an opinion on that?

Best wishes
Martin and Peter
mpathy Customer Experience

By Ross Fraser, Chief Executive, HouseMark

We operate in a sector where the impact of the market and market-based competition is limited. There’s certainly competition in terms of the development, supported housing and non-core business activity.  However, in terms of core housing management services there is only a very small market of private sector suppliers available as a source of market testing data or as an alternative to in-house supply. This is why benchmarking is popular amongst social housing organisations.  It enables peer-to-peer sharing of cost and performance data, in a safe environment, which helps providers to evaluate the relative performance and efficiency of their services.

 The significance of benchmarking is reflected in HouseMark growth over the last ten years – we now have 620 member organisations and an annual customer retention rate of over 95%.

We are also noticing that our benchmarking has increased the appetite in the sector from organisations wishing to ‘drill down’ from organisation-wide analysis into specialist niche areas such as anti-social behaviour, estate services and contact centres.  Contact centre benchmarking is a very successful initiative which we are pleased to deliver in partnership with mpathy – who are field leaders in this area.

I think that the imminent advent of Oftenant – a social housing regulator focussed on the interests of tenants – will only increase the importance of benchmarking.  We expect both the regulator and tenants to be looking for social landlords to provide comparable performance data at both an organisational and local level and to demonstrate that it is embedded within an overall performance management framework.

Having said that, I would stress that benchmarking is primarily a voluntary tool for housing organisations that has value whatever the regulatory context.

We are sometimes asked about the relationship between systems thinking and benchmarking.  Our view, and one apparently shared by our members, is that both approaches to performance improvement are complementary.  For example, systems thinking can be applied to service areas that benchmarking data indicates are less than efficient.  Once systems thinking initiatives are completed, it is our experience that organisations want to re-benchmark to test the comparative effectiveness of the changes that have been implemented.   Both approaches are valuable elements of the performance improvement toolbox.

One of the reasons we created mpathy was to be able to solve a wide range of client problems. Here are some examples of what we’ve completed over the past few months:

• Designed and implemented a new customer contact centre for a housing organisation following a strategic review of customer service
• Developed a customer service and Customer Service Centre strategy for a large housing association.
• Conducted a commercial review of a contact centre delivering services on behalf of other members of the same group.
• Specified new telephony requirements for a housing group and produced an Invitation to Tender for potential suppliers.
• Reviewed the commercial elements of careline and contact centre services delivered to third parties by a large housing group.
• Designed and managed a ‘Recovery Project’ for a large HA with contact centre performance issues.
• Provided strategic direction to an ALMO’s development plan from a customer service perspective.

• HouseMark’s Ross Fraser on benchmarking
• Solving your problems: 7 examples of how we’ve helped
• Countdown begins for survey 2008
• mpathy makes the headlines
• first direct webcast
• Talking point: systems thinking

We’d love to hear any feedback from you about mpathy matters. We are also keen to cover news from our clients in forthcoming issues so please don’t forget to keep us informed on all your latest developments. Feel free to forward this newsletter to any of your colleagues or associates. If you know anyone else that would like to receive this newsletter, please ask them to subscribe at www.mpathy.co.uk/subscribe.html

Send updates or feedback to newsletter@mpathy.co.uk

We’ve been in the press recently…

mpathy advises on staff retention and recruitment for the human resources site HRLook and Martin Jukes gazes into his crystal ball on page 19 of the new magazine Housing Technology. The magazine is looking to recruit subscribers (it’s free to subscribe) so if you haven’t heard about it then visit and register your information on www.housing-technology.com.

Peter Murley talks about his experiences with the people that he worked with when setting up first direct.

We’re expecting even more participants in the next survey which launches in May.

Feedback has been extremely positive from the 2007 customer service survey following presentations in London and Birmingham.

Completed by 62 social landlords, including housing associations, ALMOs and local authorities, the results depicted a sector that is showing positive signs of improvement as it begins to put customers at the heart of its operations.

mpathy director Martin Jukes says: “The strong attendance and feedback tells us that the survey has been useful to all participants and we are expecting to have even more participants for the 2008 one.”

If you would like to purchase a copy of the 2007 full survey report, then please email Jodie Meade from HouseMark . If you want to register for the next one then register here

Introducing a new regular section inviting debate on current issues and industry topics and coming to our website soon.

• Lean or systems thinking is all the rage at the moment and like CRM it seems that ‘everyone has to have one’.  The practice of paring down processes to eliminate waste certainly has value in some areas of business practice but are these techniques necessarily right for contact centres?

• Is it appropriate to strip out all the fat from processes when maybe customers need the opposite?  Does lean thinking work on multiple processes – a common occurrence in housing contact centres, or can it only handle one process at a time?

• There are some impressive results from these interventions but do they enhance the end-to-end customer experience or only very specific parts? 

There is no doubt a balance to be struck between cost, efficiency, value and service. What do you think? Post a reply to news@mpathy.co.uk and we will feature them in the next edition. Let us know what you think and if you would prefer to remain anonymous.