A digital platform is enabling social housing providers to give their residents easier access to services, information and support, writes Sam Dugmore, systems development and support manager at Wolverhampton Homes
When you’re responsible for more than 21,000 tenanted and leasehold council homes, you soon realise that each household has very different routines, schedules and priorities, and this shapes how they want to engage with their housing provider.
A resident on night shifts, a working parent or someone with caring responsibilities might not have the time or space to visit our website, drop us an email or call us during office hours to report a leaking tap.
At Wolverhampton Homes, we understand how important it is for residents to do all these things easily, and we knew technology could provide the answer. However, it was important to avoid giving people yet another digital channel to navigate that might only make their lives more difficult.
At a time when people can order a taxi, transfer money overseas or track a pizza delivery from their phones without a second thought, then shouldn’t they be able to access their housing services just as easily?
As easy as Uber or Amazon
Most of us naturally expect the services we use every day to be simple, fast and responsive to our needs, and banks, restaurants and retailers have responded accordingly. Our expectations are now so high, if our online shopping experience is not easy and stress-free, we will go elsewhere.
However, there is still a perception that accessing local government services could never be as easy as ordering a takeaway. But with advances in digital housing technology, it’s possible to give residents the same positive experience they receive when using their favourite apps.
We wanted to give residents an app they could use at any time, day or night, to manage their tenancy, book repairs and check their eligibility for social housing if they are on the housing waiting list. But helping residents to manage the basics of housing from their phone was just the first step: our main aim was to provide something more meaningful. That’s where personalised technology comes in.
Technology that learns and evolves
The best apps are not only easy to use but are also smart enough to understand, respond and adapt to people’s preferences, depending on which services matter to them. The NEC Engage app, which is part of our housing management platform, allows us to connect people with relevant information so they don’t have to go searching for it through a lot of irrelevant content.
The more the residents use the app, the better the content is tailored to their previous activity and interests. The technology learns about the residents from the data it collects, and it uses this to offer residents what they need.
It’s similar to the way some shopping platforms suggest products you might like based on what you’ve viewed or bought before. The more the service is used, the more personalised and relevant the suggestions become.
The app continues to learn from our housing management data, and this enables us to connect with residents on the issues they care about.
Working together to support communities
It’s important for social housing providers to listen to their residents’ concerns, gather their views and gain a deeper understanding of what matters to them.
One of the benefits of digital tools is that they make it so easy for residents to give us their feedback. Residents can tell us what they think in just a few quick taps, in the same way they would when they are rating an online delivery service or reviewing a product.
Social housing providers have a responsibility to respond to residents’ concerns, and digital technology helps us to maintain a dialogue with residents, which ensures those concerns don’t slip through the net.
One example of this was when residents expressed their views on fly-tipping and asked us for a way to report incidences of fly-tipping in their local area. This feedback enabled us to flag the issue to our development team, who added the service to the platform.
That’s just one case where technology has made us more responsive to the needs of residents and their communities.
Channel shift brings new opportunities
Since residents have been able to report and book repairs online, we’ve experienced fewer missed appointments. If a resident needs to cancel or reschedule a repair, they simply do it on the app, wherever and whenever suits them, without having to find time in the day to call us.
This means changes reach our maintenance colleagues faster, and they can adjust their scheduling straight away. It’s also helping our teams avoid the frustration of making a repair visit when nobody is home.
When people have a positive experience with an app, they are more likely to use it regularly and receive an improved experience by doing so. This has certainly been the case for us. Our app has been downloaded 32,000 times and it is growing monthly. As a result we’ve seen our email traffic reduce significantly and our social media messages reduce by 90 per cent.
With 15 per cent fewer calls coming in from residents, we can free up our phone lines for those residents who still prefer to speak to us directly. Team members spend less time responding to simple requests, so they now have more time to devote to people who need help with more complex needs.
Transforming services and improving lives
In the digital age, people have higher expectations from their service providers. With richer data on residents and their homes, and smarter technology for resident engagement, social housing can deliver on those high expectations, too.
People’s needs and priorities change over time, and the more we can do to make services easier to access, the better we can support people in their homes.
Digital technology is revolutionising the way we shop, bank and travel, and now it is changing social housing residents’ lives for the better.
