Drainage problems can cause a major headache for social housing providers and their tenants alike.
Residents need their home to be a comfortable place for their family to enjoy, so any disruption caused by downtime in the sewer network, or plumbing issues inside a property, can cause upset. It’s vital for social landlords and property managers across the housing association sector to work with suppliers who share their values and put residents at the forefront—avoiding upset for the company and the tenant alike.
Sanctuary Housing appointed Metro Rod more than 10 years ago to overcome this exact threat. With an original brief to provide responsive drainage repairs across Sanctuary’s Norwich estate should any problems occur, the relationship has developed to see Metro Rod provide a nationwide suite of solutions to proactively protect Sanctuary from downtime and customer disturbance. Roy Barrett, Contract Surveyor, at Sanctuary Housing, said: “Keeping customers happy with a seamless operation is our number one priority, and we needed a drainage provider that would align with this ethos.
“Metro Rod’s 24/7 service, proven speedy response times and ability to demonstrate they too are a customer-focused business reassured us we could rely on them to provide a first class service to our customers. Metro Rod’s work on our Norwich properties gave us complete confidence to roll out their service across our nationwide portfolio, and now we’ve been working happily together across the UK for 10 years.”
Over the last decade, the range of services Metro Rod provides to Sanctuary has expanded to include drainage, plumbing and pump services, as well as leak detection and investigations into historic or re-occurring issues to identify cost-effective solutions which prevent future disruption.
In the last 12 months, 99.9% of customers have been satisfied with the work provided.
More than that, Metro Rod has proven its ability to embed into the business and understand Sanctuary’s customers’ needs. Providing a reliable same day service and excellent first-time fix rate from friendly professional engineers, Metro Rod has acted as a first point of contact for tenants, including those who are vulnerable, to provide complete clarity to residents on how their homes will be affected – and improved – by the repairs at hand.
Additionally, the operations team within Sanctuary is able to gain a real-time view of Metro Rod’s work across its portfolio thanks to customer portal “Connect”; whenever an update on a job is required, the Sanctuary team can instantly access the job card, images from the site and live updates on the job status. It means both businesses are working in true collaboration to deliver a 360˚ service to those who need it most – customers living in Sanctuary properties.
Roy added: “Metro Rod make managing our properties easier because we can trust that our tenants’ problems will be resolved and they’ll remain happy which is what is most important to us.”
For more information on Metro Rod’s services for social landlords and property managers, call us on today 01625 507945 or visit www.metrorod.co.uk
