Customer Service Charter

Standards of Response for telephone, web, mail and fax enquiries

You can expect us to: -

• Answer 90% of all telephone calls within three rings during our office hours of 9.00am to 5.00pm Monday to Friday.
• Reply to any voicemail messages within four working hours.
• Answer e-mail messages within five working days of receipt.
• Respond to faxes within five working days of receipt.
• Answer web-based enquiries within five working days of receipt.
• Reply to letters within five working days of receipt.

A summary of our management responsibilities

We will fully discharge our contractual obligations to you and manage your development in accordance with good practice.  In particular you can expect us to: -

• Provide you with a comprehensive service charge budget within two weeks of the period start date.
• Arrange for the service charge accounts to be externally audited and provided to you within 6 months of the year-end.
• Manage your service charge monies in accordance with the ARMA, ARHM and RICS codes of practice and at all times have appropriate fiduciary and Professional Indemnity insurance cover.
• Deal with communal repairs and maintenance issues using only approved and insured contractors.
• Make regular and documented visits to your development.
• Engage with and build long-term positive relationships with all of our customers.

We will endeavour to: -

• Deliver our services in a friendly and inclusive manner.
• Treat you with courtesy and professionalism.
• Give you clear, accurate and helpful information.
• Deal with your requests, enquiries and concerns promptly.
• Treat all customers equally and without discrimination.
• Maintain confidentiality at all times.
• Find new and better ways of delivering our service

To assist us in delivering this high standard of service, we would ask you to kindly treat our staff with courtesy and in a manner in which you would expect to be treated.

What you can expect from us when making a complaint

If you have been pleased with the service we have provided to you, we would very much welcome your kind comments, it does wonders for our morale!  Please address any such comments to your Property Manager, or one of our Regional Operations Directors.  All such compliments are published in our quarterly staff newsletter.

If you are unhappy with the service you have received, we would like to hear from you so that we may be given the opportunity to put things right and to learn from the experience.

You can contact us by telephone, post, fax, e-mail or via our website.  Contact details are provided at the end of this Customer Service Charter.

All written complaints are treated very seriously and will be internally tracked to ensure we rectify your complaint at the earliest possible opportunity and have communicated with you in accordance with our published service delivery guidelines.

We will: -

• Acknowledge your complaint within 5 working days.
• Direct your complaint to the most appropriate member of staff who will be able to deal with it.
• Provide you with a full response within 10 working days.
• Pass copies of all related correspondence to our Client Services Director so that appropriate steps are taken to learn from our mistakes.
• Try our best to turn a negative experience into a more positive experience for you and to regain your confidence.

Ways to contact us

We like to hear from our customers.  Please tell us if you are happy with our service, our colleagues in Mainstay find this particularly rewarding.  Similarly, if you are unhappy with our service please let us know so we can improve it.