Our Vice Chair of InFocus, Martin Grimmer, reflects on his time volunteering for LiveWest and his delight at knowing his ongoing efforts are helping more of our customers.
With over 40 members, the volunteer scrutiny group use its voice to help improve our services for over 80,000 of our customers.
Whether a resident is free for five minutes or an hour, the group welcomes everyone and is encouraging new members to get involved so we can ensure our customers’ voices are heard and provide a better service for everyone.
The 73-year-old said: “I believe that LiveWest is a caring company. I have been involved in the customer services side of LiveWest and it comes across very loud and clear that they want to be good landlords.
“LiveWest understand the importance of our InFocus group. They respect InFocus and they give us all the information we ask for and more.
“For instance, we have been looking at LiveWest’s repair service and our customer services department takes hundreds, even thousands of phone calls a day. This doesn’t even factor in the emails or social media.
“It is quite satisfying to think that we can see an immediate benefit from being a member of the organisation.”
He added: “I have been involved with InFocus for nearly 18 months and I have to say, I am thoroughly enjoying it. It keeps my brain active which is really important when you get to my stage in life.”
Based in Tavistock, where he has lived for 42 years, Martin reflected on his journey before becoming a LiveWest customer.
Martin said: “Five years ago, I decided to sell my property and for the first time in my life I ended up not owning any property at all and was staying at my daughter’s farm in one of their holiday lets.
“All of a sudden, I was looking for somewhere to live in Tavistock. I applied to LiveWest for two flats and got one of them.
“I have to say, my experience of LiveWest’s personnel has been very good when we review a specific area of LiveWest, we talk to lots of people across the organisation, whether it be the director in charge or people in graduate roles.”
After his scheme manager suggested he should get involved because of his ideas to enhance his flat’s communal area, Martin is now happy to have progressed towards becoming the Vice Chair of InFocus alongside James Masters, the Chair of InFocus.
InFocus is divided into three groups to suit a variety of schedules and to encourage more residents to voice their opinions. The groups include service reviews, policy strategy and performance group, and friends of InFocus.
With the friends of InFocus allowing a quick way for customers to give their feedback, Martin said: “We don’t ask people to give us a big commitment.
“Our overall aim for InFocus is to make recommendations to LiveWest on how the organisation could make things better for us and to benefit all customers.”