duration

Location
Virtual

Contact centres can make or break the customer experience. As expectations rise and satisfaction comes under greater scrutiny, how can housing providers turn every contact into an opportunity to build trust, resolve problems and improve services? Hear from experts and leading landlords about what works.

  • Read more

    For many residents, the contact centre is the landlord. It is where they report a repair, chase a missed appointment, ask for help or try to resolve a problem. Get that interaction right and you build confidence. Get it wrong and frustration can quickly turn into dissatisfaction, complaints and loss of trust.

    Research from the Regulator of Social Housing shows the importance residents place on speed, responsiveness, helpful staff and ease of communication. Yet good contact-centre performance isn’t simply about answering calls quickly. Residents want to be listened to, understood and – most importantly – to get things sorted.

    This event explores how housing providers can make their contact centres a genuine driver of customer satisfaction rather than simply a high-volume, impersonal, processing operation.

    Sessions include:

    • What does great customer service look like?
      Jo Causon, CEO of the Institute of Customer Service, explores what the wider customer service evidence tells us about trust, expectations, service culture and the experiences that shape satisfaction – and what housing can learn from other sectors
    • One landlord, many teams: eliminating the handoff
      Residents don’t care which department owns their problem. So how do you prevent transfers, referrals and organisational silos from becoming the customer’s problem? Leading providers share approaches to creating seamless journeys across housing, repairs, income, complaints and other services
    • The human touch: getting the interaction right
      Technology can improve access and efficiency, but residents still value being listened to, understood and treated with respect. What skills, behaviours and culture do customer-facing colleagues need to turn difficult conversations into positive experiences?
    • Digital, AI and the future contact centre
      From chatbots and self-service to AI-assisted advisers and smarter triage, technology is changing the way residents interact with landlords. Where can it genuinely improve the experience – and where might it simply create another barrier?
    • From contact centre to customer intelligence
      Your contact centre hears thousands of residents every week. Are you making enough use of what they are telling you? Exploring how providers can turn contact data and face-to-face insight into better services, earlier intervention and improved resident outcomes
    • What would your residents say?
      What should housing providers change now if they want their contact centre to become a genuine driver of satisfaction? Hear what residents think.
  • Our speakers

    Jon Land, Head of Content, HQN
    Jon joined HQN in October 2015 after five years as editor of 24housing magazine. A journalist by profession, he started his career at the Hereford Times before joining allpay in 2005 to establish the 24dash.com news website and 24housing magazine. At HQN, Jon leads on business development and external relations.

    Jo Causon, Chief Executive, The Institute of Customer Service
    Jo joined The Institute as CEO in 2009. Over the last 10 years she has driven membership growth by 150 percent and established the UK Customer Satisfaction Index as the country’s barometer of consumer satisfaction, providing organisations with an indicator of the return on their service strategy investment.

    Jo brings a wealth of experience from the commercial sector, enabling her to put customer service at the heart of the Boardroom agenda. She has extensive experience in the financial services sector having served as a non-executive director to Aegon UK’s independent governance committee and having spent more than 11 years with organisations such as Aviva.She has also held director roles in brand and business consulting, policy development and research for the likes of City & Guilds and the Chartered Management Institute.

    Jo focuses on demonstrating the clear link between employee engagement, customer service strategies and organisational performance. Working across the public, private and voluntary sectors she provides strategic advice to Boardrooms to raise the standards of service provided by UK organisations, providing evidence of the connection between customer satisfaction and operational efficiency and profitability.

    She works with parliamentarians, officials and regulators to help them understand and harness the impact that service has on the UK economy and productivity. She is a regular media commentator and was called to give evidence at the Public Administration Select Committee inquiry into complaints handling.

    Dr Nicola Millard, Principal Innovation Partner, BT
    Once described as “human caffeine” on social media, Dr Nicola Millard injects a people-centred expresso shot to innovation and future strategy. In her long and varied career Nicola has done many jobs, including futurology, research, usability, customer service, marketing, and business consulting. She was involved with some innovation firsts, including the first application of artificial intelligence into BT’s call centres, BT’s experiments with home working, and helping to develop BT’s “net easy” customer score.
    Nicola got her PhD on motivation & technology acceptance from Lancaster University in 2005, has authored over 50 publications – including 1 book and numerous book chapters – and is a mentor on Cambridge Judge Business School’s Masters programme on innovation & entrepreneurship.
    She is an award-winning presenter, with 2 TEDx talks and hundreds of conference panel, chair, and keynote sessions under her belt. She occasionally pops up on radio and TV around the world, including appearances on ‘Woman’s Hour’, ‘Tech Tent’, ‘The Media Show’, ‘The Genius of Invention’ and ‘Back in Time for the Weekend’ for the BBC.

    Leigh Hopwood, Chief Executive, Contact Centre Management Association
    As CEO of the CCMA since 2020, Leigh draws on her 25 years’ business experience to champion the contact centre industry, holding leadership positions in a number of membership organisations and as a professional marketer. Her mission is to elevate the importance of the contact centre industry, give it a voice in society and to support those that work within it.
    Leigh has been an awards judge since 2006, is a renowned industry speaker and host of the popular podcast, CareerTalk. She represents the contact centre industry to the Department of Business and Trade (DBT), is Chair of the European Customer Contact Alliance, is an Honorary Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Marketing and a Chartered Marketer.

    Sam Phillips-Lord, Director of Customer Experience, Orbit Group
    Sam Phillips-Lord is Director of Customer Experience at Orbit Group. With more than a decade of customer experience across banking, insurance, energy and telecomms, he now applies that thinking where it matters most: people’s homes, turning customer voice and insight into better designed services and good outcomes.

    Jonathan Cowie, Chief Executive, Plymouth Community Homes

    Keryn Jeffs, Customer Services Team Leader, Bromford Flagship LiveWest
  • Programme

    10:30am Chair’s welcome and introduction

    Jon Land, Head of Content, HQN

    10:35am The role of contact centres in driving customer satisfaction

    Jo Causon, Chief Executive, The Institute of Customer Service
    • An overview of the key trends emerging from the latest UK customer satisfaction index and how housing associations/local authorities are performing
    • The role of contact centres in driving customer satisfaction
    • Why organisations should do more to recognise the importance of contact centre staff when they are invariably the first point of contact for customers
    • Highlighting some good practice around this from other organisations
    • Talking about the ICS ‘service with respect campaign’ and why it’s so important.

    11:10am Why contact centres are key to developing the right organisational culture

    Jonathan Cowie, Chief Executive, Plymouth Community Homes

    11:40am Data, digital, AI and the contact centre of the future

    Dr Nicola Millard, Principal Innovation Partner, BT
    • From chatbots and self-service to AI-assisted advisers and smarter triage, technology is changing the way residents interact with landlords. Where can it genuinely improve the experience – and where might it simply create another barrier?

    12:10pm Break

    12:30pm The human touch: getting the interaction right

    Leigh Hopwood, Chief Executive, Contact Centre Management Association
    • Technology can improve access and efficiency, but residents still value being listened to, understood and treated with respect. What skills, behaviours and culture do customer-facing colleagues need to turn difficult conversations into positive experiences?

    1:00pm Contact centres and the customer journey

    Sam Phillips-Lord, Director of Customer Experience, Orbit Group
    • Exploring the role of contact centres in the wider customer journey, looking at the end-to-end customer experience, data, culture and training.

    1:30pm Transforming the housing contact centre

    Keryn Jeffs, Customer Services Team Leader, Bromford Flagship LiveWest
    • Operational experience of transforming the contact centre and customer service approach while maintaining business as usual
    • Practical insight into using digital and AI tools to support residents and colleagues
    • What has worked well, what has been challenging and what others can learn
    • Next steps for creating a more responsive and joined-up service.

    2:00pm Closing remarks

  • Cancellations and substitutions

    If you are unable to attend an event or public training course, please let us know in writing (email is fine) at least 48 hours before. Please email [email protected]

    Otherwise, a cancellation fee of £60 plus VAT will be chargeable.

    If you are using a package place to attend and do not inform us within the agreed time frame, then a place will be taken to cover your non-attendance.

    Cancellations must be made in writing and will be acknowledged by HQN Limited.

  • Price and booking

    If you would like to send multiple members of your team to any of our events, please get in touch with [email protected] to find out about available deals for purchases of multiple places.

    Tickets

    Ticket Type Price Spaces
    Early bird Member ticket
    Available until 5pm on 16 November 2026    		 £160.00
    Early bird Non-member ticket
    Available until 5pm on 16 November 2026    		 £210.00
    Member ticket £200.00 N/A
    Non-member ticket £250.00 N/A

    Registration Information

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Dates



16 December 2026
10:30am - 2:00pm
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