Case Study    -    St Albans District Council

Domestic Breakdowns Contract

Contract first awarded 1996, re-awarded 2001 and 2006

The Background

St Albans District Council (SADC) manages over 5000 properties in the social housing sector, in or around St Albans. The properties vary from a high rise block of flats to low rise blocks to terraced properties.

In 1996 it was important to SADC to identify a local heating contractor who wanted to build a genuine long-term working arrangement delivering a heating breakdown and boiler installation service. That meant a firm whose management had the vision to see SADC through difficult times as well as the good times. Eventually, after reviewing a long list of applicants for this prestigious contract they settled on Watret. Subsequent performance confirmed that was an excellent decision.

The Solution

Watret already had the skilled engineers on board. But now they had to provide admin staff, computer systems and the robust processes to knit everything together into an end to end service. Fortunately, they had already done this several times for other clients and so within days of the contract being awarded, an experienced team was in place. In the intervening period, working together, a call centre based on landline telephone contact was implemented.

The success of the contract depends on a high level of trust and working together across all levels of staff. Prompt response to situations where detrimental service could be attributable is also a prime factor in the continued excellent performance of the contract.

The Result

Now 14 years later and having re-won the contract twice in the intervening years, Watret are still providing an excellent service. The team receives up to 30-40 calls per day across the 5000+  properties. As each call comes in, a check on the database reveals the brand of hardware at each location and within moments an engineer is assigned. First time fix rate is an industry high 75% while second time rate is 95% or higher.

Other essential KPIs, recorded monthly by the client, are also met with Priority 1, Priority 2 and Priority 7 calls striving towards 100%. However Priority 25 which is  the final priority is always  a constant 100%.