The current lockdown has resulted in River Clyde Homes, like every other housing association in Scotland, changing the way it delivers essential services to its customers.

This has been challenging in many cases, but the group phase said that staff have shown a determination to help those who need us the most at this time.

Communications with customers, using the many varied channels available, has been critical to the success of managing expectations and delivering services in new ways.

River Clyde Homes said it has award-winning customer engagement practises in place and decided to take the opportunity to ask a cross-section of the customer base whether they thought the changes to services were adequate and appropriate at this time.

A telephone survey with Armchair Critics and some people who had contacted our 24/7 call centre was undertaken.  A total of 149 customers kindly provided responses either via telephone or email and the responses were as follows:

1. Are you aware of the changes to our current service provision? - 125 (84%) said YES
2. Do you agree that we should continue to provide only emergency and statutory services during the COVID-19 outbreak? - 145 (97%) said YES
3. Have you, or someone you know, had to use our services in the last fortnight? - 109 replied either NO or N/A
4. If you used the service, how would you rate it? Happy/Unhappy? - Of the 40 said who had accessed a service 37 (92%) confirmed they were happy.

Jillian Moffat, chair of The RCH Group Board, said: “Customers are at the heart of everything we do, and it is reassuring that our staff decided to ask them what they thought of our current service provision. The results show that customers are largely understanding of the situation, but we picked up some valuable points that we have actioned to improve our services further.

“We have a large proportion of vulnerable customers who are struggling during the current crisis and I would like to thank the teams across the Group for their great work over the last six weeks to support the Inverclyde community.”

• Read all of our articles relating to COVID-19 here.