3 ... 2 ... 1 ... Contact!

Connect’s new contact centre goes live

After months of planning, preparation and in-house training, which saw two teams combined into one, our new contact centre was launched on 13 June 2011.

Our new contact centre team is made up of existing staff who found themselves with a new job title – Housing Liaison Officer – and underwent an intensive training regime which will enable Connect to deal with the majority of your queries at the first point of contact.

And to go with our new team, we have a new telephone number: 0300 5000 600. We hope you’ve already made use of the handy fridge magnet we recently sent you (if you haven’t received your magnet, please let us know). This single number replaces all of the previous lines we had for both Leeds and Huddersfield, including the switchboards, housing hotlines and Leeds repairs hotlines.

Here’s some more information about the new number:

• 0300 numbers are available exclusively to public bodies, charities and not-for-profit organisations.
• 0300 numbers are non-geographic numbers which cost the same as dialling any 01 and 02 numbers – even from a mobile phone, which is how most people call us.
• This means that if you use a mobile phone to ring us it should be included in your tariff – please check with your mobile provider to confirm this.
• It is not a premium rate number.  
• All 0300 numbers do not allow ‘revenue sharing’. This means that we cannot make any extra money from the call by taking a percentage of the call charge.

The old numbers will still work for the time being, to give everyone a chance to get accustomed to dialling the new 0300 number.

The numbers for IDM (our gas contractors) and Trinity (our repairs contractor for Kirklees and Calderdale) remain unchanged, and you can still ring these contractors direct.

Menu System

In addition to the new team and telephone number, we have a new single-layer telephone menu system, developed in consultation with tenants. This means that when you call us, you’ll be offered a limited number of options which will get you through to the right person to deal with your query as quickly as possible – for example, to speak with someone about arrears, or to report a Kirklees or Calderdale repair.

We receive a lot of enquiries from housing applicants, and we’re looking for ways to limit the amount of time we spend handling these calls, so we can dedicate more time to our tenants. As part of this effort, we will be adding a menu option for applicants in the future, allowing us to handle those calls more efficiently.

If you call the new number out of hours, you will be advised that the offices are closed, and given the option of reporting an emergency repair or an anti-social behaviour incident.

Our aim is to deliver a first-class services to our tenants. We know that most of you are already satisfied with the way we handle your calls, but we are always looking for ways to improve our services, and we hope you’ll agree that our Housing Liaison Officers are providing a better service than ever.