FCHO colleagues from across the organisation joined a group of customers last month for a two-day service design course delivered by Dave Skinner and Design Patterns for Social Housing at Primrose Place.
The training forms part of our Customer and Communities Strategy, aimed at improving service delivery and ensuring customers receive an excellent experience. The initiative also seeks to equip colleagues with the right tools and support, strengthen community relationships, and help achieve organisational objectives.
Over the two days, colleagues and customers explored key principles of user-centred design, including the ‘double diamond’ approach – which focuses on understanding problems before moving to solutions. Sessions covered stakeholder mapping and the use of empathy maps to capture what people say, think and feel when interacting with services. The empathy mapping exercise proved particularly valuable, offering insights into customer perspectives and behaviours.
Gemma Dolby, Head of Tenancy and Neighbourhoods attended the session and said:
“It was great to be involved in the Service Design workshop, the aim of the session was to learn what service design is, understand how to look at services from a customer perspective and get practical tools to use when researching, mapping and improving services.
“Working with our customers was an important part of the session. It was an opportunity to ask questions about our services, how they interact and what is important to them when they contact us.”
Zara Mills, Involved Customer who attended the two-day training, added:
"It was really interesting and eye-opening to be involved with the training. spending the time with FCHO staff, understanding things from their perspective an having the space to speak from a customer perspective was really valuable for us all.
"I really appreciated the person-centred approach. Having previously worked with children with SEN needs, I recognised similarities in some of the tasks and methods, which made the experience even more relatable. I'd definitely like to be involved with something like this again in the future."
Jayne Lawson, Executive Director of Customer Experience, explained:
"It is important that we have a pool of colleagues and customers who can support us to make sure we’re doing things in the right way. It will enable us to listen to the experiences of customers and colleagues and use these sessions to tailor our services. Involving those who both deliver and/or receive our services helps us to focus on what matters most to them."