Eye Tea

I’m fresh back from the Housing Quality Network’s conference on customer profiling which was held in Manchester today.  Fresh is the word – it was perishing cold all day in Manchester, and snow was falling heavily when I left.

There’s a single thought at the top of my mind.  The Tenant Services Authority is pushing social landlords to use customer profiling to help adapt their services to customers’ wants and needs.  The regulator is refreshingly averse to tick-box compliance, which offers landlords a real opportunity to demonstrate passion, creativity and sector leadership.  But landlords could be forgiven for thinking they’re being asked to walk to the first floor before the stairs have been built.

There’s lots to be gained here – desirable outcomes for landlords and the regulator.  There’s also a real risk of the wheel being reinvented several hundred times over.  Online and supermarket retailers have been developing know how on customer profiling for years now.  The worst case outcome would be for the social housing sector to ignore that and build new know how by trial and error.  A better route is to buy/acquire the retailers’ expertise and graft it over.  But it’s surely preferable to buy it once and share it within the sector, or at least within districts.

The same goes for data protection law, which is what I have to contribute on this topic.

Here we go again, then.  The benefits of co-sourcing ICT (for example), and whinging about how few organisations see the light on this, are two of my pet themes.  I’m not the first to apply it to customer profiling in the social housing sector.  I heard it first today from Donna Hall, Chorley Borough Council’s Chief Executive, who chaired the conference.  Needless to say, I think she’s spot on.

The TSA is running pilots and by the sound of it will publish some guidance saying what worked and what didn’t in the pilots.  I look forward to seeing that, and hopefully some of the pilots have drawn on retail sector experience so that it feeds through to other landlords that way.

Whilst we’re waiting for the guidance or regulatory comment on the pilots, or if the pilot outcomes aren’t very helpful, the smart landlords will pool resources to develop and share best practice.

A quick plug.  I’m doing a session at this event on Tuesday 26 January (London) and Wednesday 3 February 2010 (Manchester).  The conference is about using customer profiling to understand customers’ wants and needs better.  The Tenant Services Authority is pushing for landlords to do profiling, and the TSA will be presenting at the conference.  Social landlords, it would be great to see you there.  If you can’t make it, feel free to contact me to get the guts of what I’m saying at the event.

Event flier: http://www.hqnetwork.org.uk/scripts/get_events?file=2087

Bookings for London: http://www.hqnetwork.org.uk/booking_form.php?selected_id=647

Bookings for Manchester: http://www.hqnetwork.org.uk/booking_form.php?selected_id=648