Our customer support model is changing
The day-to-day experience of how business customers interact with us is changing.
During 2009 and 2010, we introduced a new customer support model for our business customers, who are mainly conveyancers.
The basis of this model is that once a customer chooses to be assigned to a Customer Team, that single Customer Team handles all their contact, and processes all their work.
There are now over 100 Customer Teams across England and Wales, serving customers who expressed a preference to be supported in this way. Many of them tell us they value the relationships they have developed.
However, in recent times, while we continue to operate the Customer Team support model, the day-to-day customer experience of interacting with us has changed. We are aware that we have not been clear about what has changed, and why the support we give you is now different.
The changes are the result of:
- decisions we have made to help deal with increased intakes of work
- Some of our offices now have centralised customer-handling teams that deal with incoming calls and email. The caseworkers who are dedicated to registering applications at these offices have fewer distractions and can focus on processing applications, but that means you may not always speak to your Customer Team in the first instance.
- the kind of work that we receive
- We have centralised where we process certain types of application. For some application types, such as requests for official copies, the nature of the work means it is more cost effective to handle these in one place. The volumes of other application types, such as First Registrations means we can process them more efficiently at central locations. This means that your Customer Team will no longer process every type of application you send us.
- more and more electronic submission and handling of applications
- We introduced the electronic Document Registration Service (e-DRS) in 2012 and we started to scan paper applications at the beginning of our registration process in July 2014. This has enabled us to react quickly to fluctuations in intakes by moving work around Land Registry to match the available resource at any given time. This means that your Customer Team will not always process every application you send us.
These changes have been necessary to help improve our efficiency and effectiveness and to align with the ongoing development of our digital services.
Providing excellent customer support is important to us and we understand that we have not always been clear enough about these changes, which has created some confusion about who is dealing with your applications, and who you need to contact if you have queries.
We apologise for any issues this has caused, and if therefore the support you receive has seemed less consistent than before.
The caseworkers who process your applications apply their judgement. One individual’s handling of your application may slightly differ from another’s, especially over some of the more complicated land registration challenges. This may become more apparent when your usual customer team does not process your application for the reasons outlined above. Consistency is very important to us so we are reviewing our processes and the support we offer our staff to help improve this for you.
We have updated our business customer contact information so you know where you can get the information you need. This should also help explain why you may not always have contact with the person or team you expect.
We hope this improves your overall experience.
As we continue to modernise our processes and make our services more easily accessible online, we will continue to change the way we offer customer support. However, we will make sure to continue to keep you better informed as we transition to a new customer support model in the coming months.