Customer profiling

What does this mean in practice? For Tor Homes, equality might mean improving access to offices and buildings for disabled people, or helping with transport to meetings from remote areas. Diversity could mean providing leaflets in a range of languages or in Braille.

The customer profile

The government recognises that having information about the people for whom we provide services is vital if we are to monitor the effectiveness of those services. It expects housing associations to know the ethnicity, age, employment status, language requirements and other basic details about residents.

A customer profile survey was distributed to Tor Homes properties in November 2006 and was sent out again at the end of 2007. The information obtained from the survey includes:

• the number of occupants of each property
• the economic status of each household member
• the gender of each household member
• the age of each household member
• the ethnicity of the head of each household
• the disability status of each occupant
• the number of residents in each household whose disability impairs activity
• the number of occupants in each household that use a wheelchair
• the number of occupants in each household with a visual impairment
• the number of occupants in each household with a hearing impairment
• the number of occupants in each household requiring information in a language other than English.

We use all this information to improve our services, and adapt them according to customer needs.