My Onward Portal

Posted: 5th Apr 2019

Responses: 663

We wanted to capture feedback from My Onward portal users on their experience of using the portal and the Onward website. Feedback gained from the survey will help us to make changes that improve the customer experience.

Background:

The My Onward portal was launched in April 2018. It is a self-service facility that allows customers to make rent payments, report and track a repair, check their balance and update their personal details.

My Onward is linked to the Onward website which offers the facility to report complaints and antisocial behaviour (ASB), the ability to find a home, as well as access to information about Onward’s services.

Approach:

We carried out an online survey with Onward tenants who had an active My Onward account. All account holders were sent an email that contained a link to the survey, and to ensure that we hit a good return rate reminder emails were sent towards the closing deadline.

Findings

Ease of Use

Most customers (79%) found the My Onward portal easy to use. Only 14% of respondents found it difficult or very difficult to use.

My Onward Portal

A fifth of customers haven’t used the My Onward portal since it was activated. The main reason for this was because they haven’t had need to use it yet.

Most customers use the My Onward portal to check their rent balance (67%) or report a repair (64%). While around a quarter of customers used it to pay their rent, update their details, make a complaint/compliment or contact Onward in general.

Onward Website

An equal proportion of respondents have and have not used the new Onward website. Of those respondents that haven’t used the website, the reasons for not doing so were that they either didn’t know about it or didn’t have a reason to use it.

The most popular pages on the Onward website were Report a Repair (48%) and the My Onward Portal (45%).

Most respondents (87%) said they found what they were looking for on the webpages they visited.

Most respondents access the My Onward portal and Onward website on their mobile phone (49%) or on a laptop/desktop PC (35%).

The majority of respondents highlighted they’d prefer to be contacted by email (47%) or on their mobile phone (28%).

Most respondents were interested in a podcast about housing news, information and advice on home maintenance.

Most people that took part in the survey would be happy to share their views with us in the future (71%).

Recommendations

In order to reduce calls into the Contact Centre include a self-service ‘password reset’ option on the website.

Improve communication – look at ways to provide confirmation of requests and messages so that it shows they have been received and actioned. This would reduce follow-up calls into the Contact Centre.

Improve access to a wider range of homes either via the Find a Home option or through links from that page.  It would be useful to include a FAQs on how to apply for a home, along with what other options are available.

It would be beneficial to include hyperlinks to other relevant pages and external organisations.

Trial the Podcast.

Actions:

We are constantly looking to improve the user experience on our website. We will shortly be introducing a direct Homes to Buy link from our ‘Find a Home’ page, which will direct customers to our new Onward Living sales website set to launch in mid-April. We are also working with colleagues to develop an FAQs section to support and improve the customer journey.

We will assess the capability of the My Onward portal to see if we’re able to resolve some of the issues raised within the survey to ensure that the portal meets the needs of our customers.

The suggestion of including Onward staff photographs will be passed on to our Operations management team for discussion.

The idea of implementing a postcode search is already in our plans for the second half of 2019.

The Podcast Strategy has been approved in principle, going forward the Onward Marketing and Communications team will lead on the development and production of podcasts, following on from the success of a range of customer-focused blogs.

We are currently reviewing all of the feedback in more detail and will use this to identify opportunities for improvement.

Watch this space…

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