The Task 

Circle (now Clarion Housing Group) is the largest provider of social and affordable housing in the UK, with a stated mission to enhance people’s ‘life chances’.

We were tasked with creating a framework for 'enhancing life chances', that would support the company strategy, as well as offer practical guiding principles for Operation Teams delivering services on the ground.

Situation

Formed from merging many distinct housing associations, Circle was aware that its brand and strategy did not necessarily resonate with its tenants, many of whom still referenced their original housing provider when communicating to highlight problems and issues. 

In order to understand these customer need and brand resonance, we designed a detailed insight programme, including reviewing previous research at a local level, conducting in-depth interviews, as well as a survey of over 600 tenants in order to test out and validate initial findings. 

For each of the three core customer segments, the project delivered a detailed Lifelines™ customer journey map, highlighting the main issues of tenant experience and the gap between customer importance and Circle delivery. In addition, we identified 4 foundation themes, defining in priority order, what makes for a great tenant experience. 

As is so often the case with our Lifelines™ insight approach, we uncovered some unexpected and revealing clues to how small issues can compound into major ones, such as how anti-social behaviour impacts the day-to-day atmosphere of living in and around the home.

Key Impact 

The outcomes of the project were:

• The development of a prioritised framework – simple and easy to describe at-a-glance, which supported consistent service

  development and operational focus.

• Engaging both Operations Teams and Comms Teams to recognise the tenant stories and experiences that highlighted the

  impact of a housing problem on tenants, and reference such impacts when fixing and communicating the issues, rather than

  only addressing them as functional problems and case numbers to be processed and cleared.

• Transitioning Circle’s dialogue with customers, towards an ‘I believe you’ attitude, rather than a ‘prove it to me’ mindset.

• Embedding follow-up comms after resolution, to demonstrate ownership, respect and brand behaviours.

• Exploring more innovative solutions working together with residents, to prevent future recurrence proactively (both cost-effective for Circle and developmental for individuals).

In addition to the above, further recommendations and initiatives in our report were accepted by the Executive Board, which included a retraining programme as well as revisions to service level contracts with all external providers.

Based on the success of the framework, its core principles were incorporated into a corporate rebranding.