Glasgow Housing Association's (GHA) efforts to ensure its tenants are given excellent customer service have been recognised nationally.

The organisation has become the first accredited 'Vanguard' centre in the UK thanks to its major improvements in designing its process around the customer.

Martin Armstrong, GHA's Executive Director of Housing and Customer Services said: "GHA is committed to delivering customer-focussed services which put our customers at the heart of everything we do. The skills, expertise and support of Vanguard have enabled us to successfully turn our systems around to move towards excellent customer experience in a very short space of time.

"The successes so far now act as the perfect foundation from which we can build further process and system changes which deliver excellent customer service and customer focussed thinking across the organisation."

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The endorsement comes after GHA has overhauled a number of services in a bid to deliver considerable improvements for tenants and owners - in both customer service and business performance across the organisation.

Working in partnership with Vanguard Scotland, GHA began to see its operations through its customers' eyes. In record time, GHA set up staff teams who worked with Vanguard to carry out reviews of its systems so that they could be redesigned for the benefit of tenants and owners.

The reviews were carried out between February and June 2008 and focussed on: rent collection, letting, the management of empty properties, repairs and maintenance, GHA's multi-million pound investment programme, complaint handling and services to owners.

Each of its business systems were examined from a customer's point of view - with the organisation making note of what worked and what didn't. GHA then set about redesigning its systems to ensure that all of them were simple, effective and customer focussed to meet the customer's need.

Nine managers officially became accredited Vanguard practitioners on Wednesday 3 December. Vanguard founder, John Seddon visited GHA to personally hand out the certificates along with GHA’s Executive Director of Customer Services, Martin Armstrong.

Stuart Corrigan, Vanguard Scotland’s Managing Director, said: "Becoming an accredited Vanguard centre is more than simply a paperwork exercise. It recognises an organisation’s commitment to focusing every aspect of its operation on delivering exemplary customer service."

He continued: "By becoming the first Accredited Vanguard Centre in the UK is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the entire GHA team and sets the benchmark for the housing industry."

(GK/JM)