We've all just wrapped up our latest session exploring scheduled engineer visits, 2 weeks after sign-up date, to demonstrate with customers how to conduct basic home repairs. The aim was to reflect back on the customer involvement day and present our plans for taking this concept forwards.
Learning from past concepts, we're opting to go through a number of test phases before eventually reaching pilot. We've designed a prototype process for how we think the service should work, who's involved and when. There are multiple dependencies in our prototype and lots of opportunities for miscommunication or system/data failings, which is why we're implementing it in a way that highlights these teething problems so we can fix them up and carry on, rather than them get lost in the chaos of it all.
Our first test is for our simplest model (just the repairs engineer visit) and will last 8 weeks but keep generating meaningful data long after. Following it's evaluation we'll be considering three strands of further testing - more engineer visits, engineer visits while providing a toolkit for customers and the same model applied to existing customers, not just new customers or relets. We'll be comparing outcomes - such as increased confidence in customers and reducing initial repairs volume (as we've been to properties to help pick up any initial problems) to see which 'build' has the highest reported value for the business and our customers.
So - we've got a plan, and there's a quiet optimism in the room. Watch this space for the official release - expected start date start of Feb.