Peaks & Plains Housing Trust, who own and manage over 5,000 homes, were looking to augment the service they provide to customers whilst ensuring that the organisation was running as efficiently as possible. To achieve this, they embarked on making digital channel shift a reality across the Trust.
Transforming the service to customers
Where the Trust really wanted to transform customer experience was to make it easier for tenants to pay rent and to log a repair and an appointment online. To do this, they used Capita’s OPENAccess solution to create a customer portal, ‘My Account’, which was integrated with Capita’s OPENHousing, DRS Planning tool and Totalmobile solutions, so that all the Trust’s information was managed, and automated, from one place.
Gary Naylor, Repairs Operations Manager, explains how this works: “By using OPENAccess integrated with OPENHousing, DRS and Totalmobile, the customer simply logs into their account to report a repairs issue, which then automatically raises a job and searches the maintenance team’s diary for the next available slots. The slots are then offered instantly to the customer to select and book their appointment. Customers can also upload photos of the required repair and a description, so that the maintenance engineer can arrive as prepared as possible to fix the issue on the spot, reducing the need for a second visit.”
Leading the way in the digital transformation of social housing
Peaks & Plains Housing Trust are justly proud of leading the way in using technology to transform their service delivery as Neil Bancroft, Head of Service Improvement, explains:
“We believe we’re one of the first housing organisations in the UK to offer this fully automated service, and we were delighted to be the hosts for an open day recently, where other housing associations and providers visited us to see how self-service is working. We’ve achieved true digital transformation in how we automate and manage our repairs, offering our customers a seamless experience and realising efficiencies in the process.”