Transforming the tenant journey with digital channels and back-office connectivity
Empowering tenants and employees to resolve cases quicker and more effectively.
The challenge
Cairn Housing Association, and its subsidiary Ancho, are not-for-profit charities providing quality, affordable homes and services throughout Scotland.
A new level of demand
Cairn were trying to tackle tenants’ growing needs to request a service or make a payment, at a time and using a method convenient to them. Disconnected back-office systems were holding Cairn back, and causing their team to use workarounds, which added additional complexity and often resulted in errors or stages being missed.
Their goal was to enable tenants to contact and log an enquiry quickly, using a range of channels, and deal with as many queries as possible at the first point of contact. It was increasingly difficult to maintain seamless customer experience for tenants unless they could introduce a range of digital channels.
Cairn implemented the Liberty Platform, our all-in-one customer experience suite.
“Since implementing the Liberty platform, which has enabled us to build MyCairn, all cases are handled quicker. You can instantly see where a customer is in the journey. Pending cases, if carried over to the next day, can be easily picked up by the next available advisor, who is provided with the full case history and can quickly support them.”
Jenny Thorpe
Senior Advisor, Cairn Housing Association
The solution
The journey didn’t stop at functionality. To truly keep up with tenants, Cairn needed to be available on a variety of channels. They deployed the end-to-end capability of Liberty Converse, our complete omnichannel contact centre solution, which enables conversational messaging and chatbot tools.
Using Converse and Connect for social media messaging, Cairn can connect tenants with advisors on their channel of choice, including Facebook Messenger or web chat.
Thanks to close integration with social media, 7,817 emails, 794 web chats and 280 messages were received to the platform in the first four months.
Social media provides tenants with more options for contact, and the added convenience means that cases are logged much quicker.
The launch of the MyCairn portal was planned for April 2020, so Cairn faced extra challenges as its entire workforce was forced to work from home.
The agile nature of low-code meant that the remote working team could make flexible agile updates after receiving virtual feedback and bug reports.
As the system is so easy use, Cairn was able to continue rollout to employees as planned using Microsoft Teams and Office 365 to collaborate and train staff. This was supported by online tutorials and FAQs.
“The rollout of MyCairn came at a pivotal time for Cairn and our tenants. The pandemic created huge challenges, for our team who were working remotely, but for our tenants too, who faced uncertainty and lockdown restrictions. Never was there a greater need for automation and seamless integration within our processes. The capacity offered by low-code has allowed us to free teams up for more complex decisions and to spend their time on higher-value tasks, such as supporting more vulnerable tenants during their time of need.”
Neil Golightly
Business Services Manager, Cairn Housing Association
The result
The digital team developed a customer management system using Liberty Create, our low-code platform
Cairn designed and built a new online portal for its tenants called MyCairn which allows tenants to pay rent, report repairs or log complaints
Some processes are fully automated, others are followed up during office hours
In the first 4 months, 16 services were made available MyCairn for tenants to access at any time (including repairs, complaints, antisocial behaviour reporting and service satisfaction surveys)
5,902 cases were completed overall by both the tenants and the Cairn team
530 satisfaction surveys were returned, with the average satisfaction rating of 8.45 out of 10
Built and deployed a welfare call solution in two days, which managed 1,002 calls, emails and SMS in its first 3 months, with each customer given regular updates
Hear it for yourself
Responding fast
The team are now able to segment and identify tenants to tailor services to them via calls, emails and SMS alerts, with the system automatically triggering follow-up contact where necessary.
Impact
Frictionless
access across any channel – voice & digital
Flexibility
team can work from anywhere
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efficiency & value for money
Revolutionise digital services
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