Housing Contact
Simpler, Faster, Smarter
Win-win for
landlords and tenants
The combined impacts of the 1% rent reduction, the roll
out of Universal Credit and wider changes to housing
policy mean that housing associations must work harder
than ever to protect their income.
Housing Contact offers a simpler, faster and smarter way
to collect arrears, with proven results.
About Home Group
• Award winning national social landlord
• 55,000 homes in more than 200
local authority areas
• £327m turnover
• 92% customer satisfaction
“It was very obvious quite early in the pilot that Housing Contact’s
call solution was going to make a significant difference to our
performance. Our Customer Service Advisors are seeing greater
job satisfaction too - they are now talking to a greater number of
people who want to pay rather than to those who are avoiding it.”
Chris Roberts, Head of Customer Service Centre, Home Group
Anyone who’s worked in housing arrears will recognise the
effort it takes to make contact with tenants and former
tenants who either can’t, or won’t, pay.
Home Group was no exception, and with 55,000 properties
spread across the UK, including some in areas already
impacted by Universal Credit, senior managers were quick
to recognise that arrears management needed to be
made smarter - and to do this quickly. The rationale for
introducing Housing Contact was to speed up the contact
process in order to help people who are in genuine need of
support sooner, and to tackle those who ‘won’t pay’ using a
more consistent and less resource intensive approach.
“At the point when we started using Housing Contact, we
had 34 full time staff making outbound calls to tenants
who were in arrears,” said Home Group’s Head of Customer
Service Centre, Chris Roberts.
“Time was being wasted as staff were spending a lot of time
on calls that just weren’t being answered. In some cases
it was possible for someone to spend a whole day making
calls and getting through to no-one, or only a handful of
tenants. It just wasn’t a value for money way of working,
we needed to do something different.
“We piloted Housing Contact in July 2014 and the results
were almost immediate. Our team went from spending
their time trying to make contact with tenants, to using
this time far more effectively answering inbound calls off
the back of the automated contacts that Housing Contact
had made. The system essentially took the ‘grunt work’
out of the process.
“The best thing about Housing Contact is that it is
completely configurable - so how it is used is completely
within our control. We can switch calling on or off at any
time, we determine the messages that are used - and we
can even tailor it by different customer groups. The team
at Housing Contact have also been great and have used
their experience in other sectors to provide us with gentle
but insightful advice on the most effective approaches to
collecting debt with this type of technology.
“Since implementing Housing Contact, our income and
arrears position has improved, arrears cases have
dropped significantly and we are on top of tenant debt
sooner. By doing this, it’s a win - win for us as a company,
but also for our tenants. Ultimately we want to help our
tenants to address arrears issues early so that problems
don’t escalate. The earlier we can talk to our tenants about
their accounts, the more support we can give them to get
back into the black.
“Not only are we now collecting more income than
before, automating outbound calling has also given us
cashable efficiencies - so we no longer have 34 staff
chasing debt, we only need 27. Fewer people, collecting
more income means we can demonstrate efficiency and
other housing providers are now looking to us to show
them how it’s done.”
Measurable benefits
£
Increase in
immediate payments
Reduction in volume
of arrears cases
7 FTE reduction
Significant cashable
efficiencies realised
3 awards won
• More and more housing associations are using Housing
Contact to deliver a simpler, faster, smarter approach to
arrears collection.
• It can be used in conjunction with rent decision
software like Mobysoft’s Rentsense.
• The system is fully configurable so that you remain
in full control of who is contacted, when and how.
• Our experience across the sector means that we can
offer insight into what works - and help you to achieve
the results you need.
Call us on 0161 259 1122
or visit us at www.housingcontact.co.uk
Housing Contact
Simpler, Faster, Smarter
Housing Contact, Sun House,
2-4 Little Peter Street, Manchester M15 4PS