How Stonewater reached 91% lettings satisfaction with real-time tenant feedback
Stonewater manages around 33,600 homes in England for more than 75,000 customers, from general rent and shared ownership to retirement living, refuges, and young people's foyers. It replaced slow telephone surveys with feedback after every repair, letting, and call, while moving its service center team to remote working.
01The challenge
The challenge: six-week telephone surveys in social housing
Telephone surveys that took up to six weeks.
Stonewater's transactional feedback came mainly from telephone interviews. They were too expensive to run at the volume needed to represent its whole customer base, and results could arrive up to six weeks after the interaction.
By then response rates were low and customers no longer remembered the experience clearly. All of this had to change while the service center team moved to working from home during the pandemic.
Delay between the customer's interaction and the result.
02What changed
The fix: tenant feedback at every touchpoint, on every channel
Every touchpoint, on the channel that suits the tenant.
Stonewater now captures feedback after contact center calls, repairs, lettings, complaints, capital investment works, and anti-social behavior cases, using text message, email, interactive voice, and listening posts.
Real-time trends led to practical changes. Damaged boilers are now replaced while a property is empty, so a new tenancy starts without disruption. A best practice guide sets the cleaning standard for empty homes, and underperforming contractors are spotted and addressed straight away.
Contact center, repairs, lettings, complaints, capital works, and anti-social behavior cases.
03The result
The result: 91.2% lettings satisfaction during the pandemic
Satisfaction that held up through a pandemic.
With agents working from home, the Frontline dashboard shows each person their satisfaction scores and individual comments. Results are shared in weekly meetings, which encourages healthy competition, and coaching goes exactly where it is needed instead of relying on subjective call monitoring.
Overall satisfaction reached as high as 87.5% in a month. Year-end satisfaction was 91.2% for lettings, 88.2% for the contact center, and 82.6% for responsive repairs.
Year-end customer satisfaction by service.
Stonewater results at a glance
Stonewater is a housing association in England. Social landlords in England report Tenant Satisfaction Measures to the Regulator of Social Housing, which makes timely tenant feedback on repairs, complaints, and communication part of everyday management.
| Measure | Before | Result |
|---|---|---|
| Time to survey result | Up to 6 weeks | Same day |
| Lettings satisfaction | Not reported | 91.2% |
| Contact center satisfaction | Not reported | 88.2% |
| Overall customer satisfaction | Not reported | 84.5% (monthly high 87.5%) |
How to run a program like Stonewater’s
- List every touchpointRepairs, lettings, contact center calls, complaints, capital works, and anti-social behavior cases.
- Use the tenant's channelSurvey by text message, email, interactive voice, or a listening post.
- Act on trends earlyFix recurring issues, such as boilers in empty homes, before they become complaints.
- Share scores weeklyShow agents their own satisfaction scores and comments in weekly meetings.
Voice of Customers runs every step on one platform, from the survey to the follow-up.
We used the motto, “if you don't serve the customer directly, you serve someone that does”. With that in mind, we wanted to ensure feedback was highly visible across the organisation.
What they use
The parts of Voice of Customers behind Stonewater’s results.
Every module runs on one platform, with surveys by text message, email, voice, and web form, a sentiment engine that reads every comment, and follow-up that gives each unhappy customer an owner.
- Text message, email, and voice surveys
- Listening posts
- Frontline Engagement
- Feedback dashboard
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Get the Stonewater case study as a two-page PDF.
The results, the charts, and how they did it, in a format you can forward to your team or bring to a budget meeting.
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Bring one journey you want to hear more about, such as a repair, an appointment, or a support call. We will show you the survey, the dashboard, and the follow-up built around it.