• What would you say are the main challenges for your service charge teams right now?

The last few years have been challenging for everyone. Both residents and colleagues have faced financial pressures with the rising cost of living, higher inflation and increased borrowing costs. Some residents’ service charges have surged dramatically in part due to building insurance and rising managing agent costs. As an employer, we recognise the challenge for our teams in communicating these issues. It requires precise and transparent communication, especially when explaining the reasons behind cost increases which can change quite quickly. We know it’s incredibly frustrating if we’re not accurate in recharging, and the volume of queries has increased significantly in recent years as services, labour and other costs have increased.

• How does a more resilient team benefit your customers?

A resilient team directly benefits residents by ensuring prompt, personalised, consistent, and reliable support, ensuring that residents receive accurate and timely responses. Reliability builds trust and confidence among residents and a resilient team is one that can adapt during time of increased volumes of inquiries without compromising the quality of service.

Compassion and empathy as well as delivering on promises is important to both how the team works and in how we communicate with residents. Clear and transparent communication is crucial when explaining complex information. Leaders play an important role in encouraging open communication and creating a culture for team members to voice their concerns and work together to find solutions.

• What are the headline tips you’ll share in this session?

In this session, we’ll discuss the importance of putting residents at the heart of what we do and how we can work with colleagues in other teams to get the basics right. Leaders need to show a genuine interest in their teams’ progress as well as reviewing where processes are working well and what can be done to improve them for residents. How can we foster a culture of challenging the way we work? How can we support colleagues dealing with more frequent and complex enquiries? As leaders we must promote trust within our teams and find ways to support ongoing learning and development during times of uncertainty and rising resident expectations.

• What are you looking forward to most at the conference?

I’m looking forward to sharing experiences and insights with others in the sector and learning about new ideas, innovative approaches and what is working well for other housing associations. The conference gives us the opportunity to share our challenges and discuss potential solutions while building connections with like-minded professionals who all want to deliver better services and support for our residents.