Digital Innovation: The Key to Delivering Simple and Accessible Customer Service for Housing Associations

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been exploring the impact the Charter for Social Housing and Residents report is having on the Housing Associations landscape. While the demand for improved CX from Housing Associations (HAs) has been increasing for some time, groups in this industry have recently begun encountering new pressures as a result of evolving regulations.

According to the Charter for Social Housing and Residents, today’s HAs must invest more heavily in finding ways to deliver a more comprehensive, resident-centric experience. So far, we’ve discussed the ways investing in digital transformation can assist housing associations in delivering more respectful experiences, providing residents with access to clear and timely information and more.

This week, we’re looking at the 6th area covered by the charter: Ensuring residents have simple and accessible routes to raising an issue.

Ensuring Residents Can Raise Issues Effectively

No matter how much time, effort, and resources HAs invest into delivering phenomenal resident experiences, there will always be issues customers need to address. Whether it’s a problem with billing, a maintenance issue, or a concern about a residential service, HA customers need to be able to be able to access simple, effective routes to resolving a problem.
Unfortunately, in the past, many Housing Associations have struggled to deliver on this front. Although around 67% of HAs say they’ve invested in new technology in recent years, to help them stay ahead of the digitally-transforming landscape, many still don’t give residents many options for accessing help. Countless HAs are still reliant on email and phone calls alone when connecting with customers. This means many residents still can’t connect with experts on the channels they use most.

Additionally, when contact volumes spike, Housing Associations are often left struggling to manage and track large numbers of emails and calls with limited team members. Fortunately, solutions are available. Investing in the right technology gives HAs a way to improve their relationships with citizens, strengthen team productivity, and unlock new avenues for growth.

How HAs Can Make Service Simpler and More Accessible

Numerous tools in the technology landscape can assist HAs in ensuring residents have access to simple routes for raising an issue. Here are just some of the main areas many Housing Associations may benefit from exploring in the months and years to come:

1. CCaaS platforms for Omnichannel Service

Providing residents with “routes” for reporting and resolving an issue doesn’t just mean giving them access to phone and email service in today’s modern world. Increasingly, citizens from all walks of life are relying on a wider variety of tools to connect with service providers. As younger generations move into the housing space, they’re increasingly prioritizing simpler, more convenient modes of communication, from SMS and text to online chat and messaging.

CCaaS (Contact Centre as a Service) platforms, allow Housing Associations to unify a range of communication channels into a single CX strategy. With these cloud-based tools, HAs can rapidly leverage a range of new channels for communicating with residents, without increased maintenance costs, expenses, or complexity.
The right CCaaS platform will ensure teams can communicate with residents using phone calls, video conferencing, SMS, social media, and messaging apps, all from a single unified backend. Not only does this give consumers more choices when it comes to raising an issue, but it can boost the quality of the service provided too. A truly omnichannel contact center solution will preserve the context of the conversation from one channel to the next, ensuring citizens don’t need to repeat themselves.

2. UC and Integrations for Unified Service Management

CCaaS platforms are excellent for giving agents in a HA environment an aligned environment where they can handle conversations from multiple channels at once. However, these flexible, cloud-based tools can be enhanced even further with the use of integrations and cross-platform connections.

For instance, with XaaS vendors, Housing Associations can align their contact center platforms, with other essential software solutions, such as unified communication and collaboration platforms. A combined UCaaS and CCaaS offering ensures team members have access to the information and support they need to address issues raised by residents as quickly and effectively as possible.

Flexible cloud-based platforms supporting APIs and integrations can also allow teams to leverage:
• CRM integrations: Customer relationship management tools built into a unified service dashboard provide agents with behind-the-scenes insights into customers and their journeys. This ensures each agent can deliver a personalized level of service, track previous incidents residents may have reported, and even set up notifications to remind them when to follow up.
• Knowledgebase tools: Knowledgebase tools built into the service dashboard provide agents with valuable access to documents, standard operating procedures, and insights relevant when addressing customer issues. An easy-to-use ecosystem will ensure staff can rapidly find the ideal solution to a problem, leveraging AI virtual assistants, and search tools.
• Analytics: Analytics and reporting tools built into the service environment can ensure employees can keep track of everything from common recurring issues to citizen sentiment. These data-driven tools assist agents in making better decisions in the moment when dealing with residents, and help business leaders develop intelligent strategies for growth.

3. Automation and Artificial Intelligence

Tools for automation and AI can also be extremely useful when providing citizens with simple, efficient routes to raising an issue. Chatbots infused with automation technologies can collect information from a customer about a service issue or fault instantly, at any time of the day.

These solutions can work 24/7 to collect valuable data when service agents aren’t available. This is becoming increasingly crucial at a time when 90% of customers expect an immediate response from customer service. In some cases, AI tools can even provide citizens with strategies for resolving a problem, troubleshooting tips, and access to articles to help them address problems themselves.

Not only do self-service solutions help residents to resolve more issues themselves, leading to faster results and happy citizens, but they can also reduce the strain on the HA workforce too. When residents can report issues quickly and effectively, without having to speak to an agent, human workers have more time to focus on actually resolving problems and addressing other concerns.

As AI solutions become more intelligent, and workflow builders offer companies easy access to tools for automation, these resources are becoming increasingly valuable. The right AI and automation tools can improve customer satisfaction, reduce operating costs, and even provide business leaders with access to more useful insights, all with minimal initial investment.

Delivering Simple and Accessible Service: A Priority for HAs

Ultimately, while the citizens Housing Associations serve may not be exactly the same as the customers of retail brands and similar companies, they do have many of the same priorities. Today’s residents expect more from the HAs they work with. They want to ensure they can raise issues quickly and effectively on a range of channels, and gain rapid access to solutions.

Fortunately, digital tools, from AI and automation builders, to CCaaS and UCaaS platforms and beyond, can all help Housing Associations adhere to these changing expectations.

Here at UC Advisor, we can help you start your journey to true digital transformation, ensuring you stay up-to-date with the regulations of your industry. Not only do we have a fantastic comparison matrix available to help you find the right vendor, but our Transformation Fund also ensures you can find the no-strings-attached funding you need to take the next step in your journey.

Contact us today to learn more about how we’re helping Housing Associations to evolve.