During my many years of employment in the hospitality, retail and social housing sectors, not to mention as a customer myself, I have witnessed examples of client service ranging from excellent to abysmal. I have also noticed that face-to-face encounters often get higher priority than “over-the-phone” clients receive. Consider, for example, the times you’ve been in a department store and heard the phone ringing non-stop. Or the occasions when you have phoned a retailer and been put on hold…indefinitely.

You might think that, because you don’t work in retail, telephone customer service doesn’t apply to you. Think again. As housing professionals we deal with customers all the time – office colleagues, the tenants/members who live in our buildings, the neighbour who calls to register a noise complaint – all deserve to receive the same courtesy as the “paying customer” that we associate with traditional customer service.

But even if you have already embraced the idea of equal service for all, keep in mind that the telephone is a totally different environment, with its own unique challenges. For one thing, there are no visual cues to provide you with information about the client’s state of mind.

First and foremost, be aware of these barriers to listening:

• We think we’re right and the other person is wrong
• We feel we have to provide assistance right away
• We prefer to talk rather than listen
• We are waiting for gaps or pauses to jump in with our response

So with that in mind…..

Stay focused
Prevent yourself from being distracted by colleagues or external noises and concentrate on what your caller is saying.

Ask questions
Gain more information on points you need to clarify. Once you have asked a question……

Don’t interrupt
We listen more effectively when we are not talking, so refrain from interrupting your caller. Let them finish what they are saying; interruptions may break their train of thought.

Write down key facts
Have a pen and paper handy and get into the habit of making short quick references to any questions you want to ask or points you wish to raise or comment on. When he/she has finished speaking, refer back to your notes and take action. If you are thinking of answers and responses whilst the caller is speaking, you are not listening!

Summarize
Reflect back to check you have heard the key facts and content of the stakeholder’s conversation correctly. It also lets them know you have understood them. Statements such as “What I’m hearing is…” and “Sounds like you are saying…” are great ways to reflect back and review the conversation.

By keeping these simple guidelines in mind, you’ll find that your telephone interactions with stakeholders more productive, and they will be more satisfied with the service they receive.

John Osmond is the Manager of Client Services at Social Housing Services Corporation.

The holiday season is here! To help you have a festive season and prevent accidents related to holiday decorating, here are some helpful tips for you and your tenants:

• Use only non-flammable decorations (i.e. CSA-approved lights and electrical decorations).
• Make sure to keep lights, ornaments, tinsel and other tasty-looking decorations off the floor and out of reach of children or pets.
• If you’re putting up a real tree to decorate your foyer or other common areas, make sure you keep it watered.
• Check your holiday lights – they should not be hot to the touch. Also check your electrical outlets and circuits. They should not have any broken ground plugs, frayed wiring, broken sockets, cuts, nicks or gaps in insulation.
• Don’t overload your electric outlets and circuits by using multiple plugs, circuit extenders/splitters or multiple extension cords.
• Candles should be placed on a fireproof base or in holders that cannot be easily knocked down or reached by children and pets.
• Keep a working fire extinguisher handy and familiarize yourself and your staff with its use.
• Make sure emergency exits are clearly marked.

Make sure to share these tips with your tenants and have a safe and happy holiday season.

It has been 37 years since the first Climate Change conference in Stockholm and now we are on the eve of the latest round in Copenhagen.

But what does it mean for us?

Lately there have been questions raised about whether or not Global Warming is ‘real’ or not. In Canada we are becoming painfully aware of the changes in our north with the shrinking of the ice caps and the dangers that these changes mean for our northern communities. Scientists have warned of much bigger and more dangerous changes.

And what is it that is driving all of this?

For the most part it is believed that the burning of fossil fuels to create energy is the main cause of Global Warming. That has been our traditional source of energy for the past 150 years, the same period that has seen the most explosive growth of human kind in history.

But what are the options?

The sun produces enough energy to supply 8,000 times the entire planets needs for 2004. 8,000 times! So why are we not using this energy? Because we have become used to doing business a different way and have set up our economies to mesh with that model. Why not change? Because change is always difficult, especially for those that rely on a particular form of business to create revenue, like oil companies for instance.

But the real question is, whether or not you believe in Global Warming, why would we not want to change to an energy source that is virtually free and will last until the planet falls apart? Why would we not want to switch to a source that does not create toxic emissions and can be accessed anywhere in the world?

When Winston Churchill was preparing Great Britain for WWI he insisted that the war would be lost if the British navy did not switch fuel sources, from coal to oil. The establishment fought hard and claimed that the economy would fall to pieces, thousands would lose their jobs and the war would be lost. Sound familiar?

One thing we do know for sure, energy prices are only going in one direction, up! Given the chance of offsetting a traditional energy source with a renewable one, especially when it might be paid for through infrastructure and/or incentive programs, the choice seems clear.

Keir Brownstone is the General Manager of Green Light On A Better Environment (GLOBE), an SHSC subsidiary. For more on GLOBE, visit www.globeservices.ca

You’ve been given the go-ahead from your service manager to spend some of the SHRRP funding on a major project like a new roof or a make-up air unit. Now you just need to find someone to do the work.

Sounds simple, right?
Not necessarily. As one housing provider, a one-person operation in eastern Ontario recently put it,

“There is so much work out there that contractors can afford to cherry-pick”.

The provider has exhausted the list of qualified local firms, but casting a wider net could mean posting a public tender document. Like many housing providers, he simply doesn’t have the time or the experience to take this on.

So, what are the options?
Under an agreement between the Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing and SHSC, housing providers and service managers have access to a host of free technical and non-technical services. From site inspections to priority setting, preparing bid packages to evaluating submissions and more, SHSC’s Technical Services team has the expertise to help you spend those SHRRP dollars. We’ll work with you in person or over the phone.

All you need to do in order to access these services is to call SHSC’s Customer Care line at 1-877-733-7472.

First off, let me say that I’m a blogging novice, so hopefully I won’t violate too many rules of social networking here! But when Graham Watts (who is Director of Resource & Exchange (REX), Training & Development) asked me to get involved in our team’s contribution to the new blog for our colleagues in the social housing sector, I couldn’t turn him down… turns out Graham is quite persuasive.

Before I go any further, I want to introduce myself to you. I’m Tim Leung, Research Analyst in REX from SHSC. I’ve been in this role for about six months, and prior to that, was a research assistant at the University of Toronto. Before joining SHSC, I held a role in statistical analysis in Charter Cases, and also picked up some interesting knowledge in shelter development in the Third World.

But enough about me… the real reason I’m blogging is to talk about my attendance at the XXV International Methodology Symposium in Gatineau, Quebec from October 26-30, organized by Statistics Canada. To be sure, I am no survey methodologist in the strictest sense (my statistical training was at the analytical end), but I am currently working on satisfaction surveys to evaluate services for the social housing sector (stay tuned).

One way we evaluate our services is through longitudinal data analysis. Why do we care so much about this kind of analysis even if the surveys we conduct do not involve the general public?

The answer?

It matters to us because social housing, as with all sectors, can suffer from “survey overload” and response rates can decline over time (this even happens with big-time statistical agencies like Statistics Canada). For instance, when people feel that their response to a survey produces no value, they are less likely to respond the next time. There are many problems associated with a decline in response rates. Perhaps, the most crucial problem, from an organizational view, is that a decrease in participation can actually increase the costs of the operating cost of conducting a survey (e.g. how many times do we have to call back respondents who did not respond initially or who left out key information?).

When response rates decline in longitudinal surveys about household spending, for instance, one strategy can entail selecting other respondents to be part of the sampling frame. It is harder for us to do this in the social housing sector because we have a smaller pool of respondents – when our “sector” respondents stop responding to surveys, we have nowhere else to go! Moreover, our respondents are pre-determined—they include housing providers and property managers in Ontario—and if we survey the entire group at once and receive a low response rate, there is no replacement!

There are, obviously, possible implications to how we approach surveys and the potential burden it has on busy respondents (e.g. housing providers, property managers). Many social housing providers can recall responding to lengthy surveys over the years as either government or others try to identify issues in the social housing sector and apply common solutions. We acknowledge the importance and the sincerity of these approaches, but at the same time we have to learn from past mistakes and try to create a system of information-gathering that builds on current systems and data to create an ongoing and manageable way of measuring the “state” of social housing. Stay tuned for more as SHSC moves forward with a data collection and inventory plan and evaluates the social housing sector in a “longitudinal” way!