A new service has been launched at Cloch Housing Association which offers a one stop shop service for its customers.

The Customer Connections service has replaced the press 1 or press 2 feature with three customer advisors who are on hand to answer customer calls.

Cloch has recruited a new team leader Louise Carlin to supervise the team of customer advisors who will be able to respond to a multitude of queries from taking repairs, to answering rent questions, taking payments and answering other queries about the Association and the services it provides. They will be making sure the reception desk is staffed and will carry out a number of other support tasks to assist other departments within the Association.

The new service has been introduced after two years of the Association’s customer service project – FACE (Focus on Achieving Customer Excellence) and is the biggest single change as a result of this project. Cloch said it will continue to work on improvements to ensure that it keeps customer service at the forefront of all that it does and will look to create efficiencies and value for money at all times.

Paul McVey, director, said he is delighted to see the new service in place: “After we introduced the new Customer Service Standards our next service enhancement was the one stop shop; and we see it as the best way to ensure we meet the standards and offer customers the best service we can. Our staff in Customer Connections are well known to customers already and building on their extensive experience will be the development of more and more services over the next six months.”

Julianne Scarlett, chair of Cloch’s Board, said: “The Board have been supportive of Customer Connections as we believe that the customer experience at Cloch should be the best it can be. By providing staff who can answer most queries first time, we hope to deliver a better service for customers and remove delays and duplication. Our satisfaction levels are already high with customer service but we want to improve further and be the best.”

The team will also be able to take complaints and can help with queries on Inverclyde Care and Repair and the Inverclyde Common Housing Register.

Cloch’s specialist teams in Housing, Property, Care and Repair, Factoring and Finance are still on hand to deal with more in- depth queries, problems and complaints, but by freeing up more of their time, the Association hopes they can be out more, visiting tenants, owners and inspecting its estates to keep on top of the issues and solutions.