Two Hour Appointment Slots - "You Said We Did"

Two Hour, and Weekend and Evening Appointment Slots

At Irwell Valley we are always trying to improve the service we offer to our residents, through utilising the feedback from residents to tailor our service further.

We discovered from resident feedback that our customers wanted us to provide a more accurate time when a contractor was going to turn up, therefore allowing our customers to go about their normal day with out having to wait in all morning or afternoon.

To address this issue we piloted a ‘Two Hour’ appointment slot on certain types of work. These were small plumbing, joinery and electrical jobs that were less than £150 in value. In February we launched the pilot scheme in the Bolton area and we have now rolled the pilot out over the remaining areas and have received great feedback on the project.

A final decision will be made in September as to whether we will continue with the project, but if the positive feedback continues we will be making the ‘Two Hour’ appointment slots a permanent part of the new Responsive Repairs Contract which is due for renewal in April 2011.

In addition to the ‘Two Hour’ appointment slots, we also opened up to all residents, not just residents on Gold Service, the opportunity to book an appointment for a repair to be carried out at the weekend or in the evening after work. The Repairs Service Team now as standard will offer an appointment for the evening or weekend.

We have monitored the number of requests for the service and have found that the uptake is very low. We opened up evening and weekend appointments to all residents in February of this year and to date we have only received twenty requests even when they were being offered by the Repairs Service Team.

We beleive the low demand for evening and weekend appointments is because of the launch of ‘Two Hour’ appointments. Now residents have the ability to plan their day knowing that they only have to set aside two hours for the contractor to visit, residents are less likely to take up their evening and weekends waiting for contractors.

Should any of our residents have more ideas on how we can further tailor our service to suit the demands of our residents please feel free to Call our Repairs Manager Iain Wallace on 0161 610 4612 who would welcome all and any ideas.