Leeds-based Yorkshire Housing owns and manages more than 18,000 homes and provides a range of services enabling people to live independently across the county. The organisation, at the time of writing in late 2018, employed over 600 people. To help achieve its ambition that everyone should have the opportunity to live in a quality home they can afford, Yorkshire Housing had a strategic priority to provide 3,000 more dwellings for people with all incomes by 2021.
The organisation, which has a customer focus and was already achieving a 90 per cent client satisfaction level, also aimed to help 1,000 people into employment, better jobs, training and volunteering and assist 15,000 older people to live independently
The Relationship
JTM originally had a relationship with Bradford-based Brunel Housing, which transferred its stock to the future Yorkshire Housing in 2006. JTM has so far supplied 175 commercial washing, drying and dishwashing machines for around 90 per cent the customer’s sites containing flats and sheltered housing.
Most of these appliances were manufactured by Miele, as the provider is the authorised dealer for this German global market leader in Yorkshire and the Humber plus North-East England. Although Yorkshire Housing also has some commercial machines from other sources, including a number inherited through mergers, JTM has already extended its rapid-reaction repair service – it boasts an enviable overall 94.6 per cent first-time fix rate – and annual maintenance offering to these appliances.
Moreover, Yorkshire Housing is now replacing these additional machines, as they become inoperable, with Miele products that JTM supplies. It’s therefore likely the company will have provided all the customer’s commercial appliances and be its sole supplier of related services within the next few years. This standardisation is delivering advantages such as minimising damaging downtime, as JTM has fast access to more than 350,000 relevant parts. JTM also maintains an asset register, so it can alert Yorkshire Housing when maintenance visits, for example, are due.
These deliver customer benefits such as ensuring maximised machine speed and output quality, optimised energy efficiency and minimised bills, plus legal and regulatory compliance.
What the client says
Michael Buckley, Property Compliance Manager, Yorkshire Housing, says: “Both the engineers and the back-office staff at JTM are excellent. “They deliver a highly personal service and if a machine breaks down, for example, we get straight through to a human being, not an automated voice. If the staff member we’ve tried to contact isn’t there, someone else takes charge of our problem immediately.
“We monitor contractors’ response times, but this has never been a problem with JTM, as they’re very reactive. Their communication is outstanding too – if they need to order a part, for example, they keep us in the loop until it’s fitted.
“Their people have an impressive knowledge base and we’ve never had issues with their engineers’ technical capabilities. Many of their staff have been with the business for several years, which must be a positive sign too.
“We like the leasing options JTM offers and are now obtaining all our replacement machines on this basis, as it enables us to accurately service-charge capital costs back to our customers. We can, therefore, reclaim money and order better machines, with higher specifications, in the future.
“Overall, JTM delivers exactly what we want. I’d be quite happy to recommend them to other businesses, including other social landlords.”
