Greatwell Homes, formerly Wellingborough Homes, is a not-for-profit registered social landlord established to address the housing requirements of those in Wellingborough and the surrounding areas. The housing association provides over 5,200 homes and is committed to creating friendly communities where people want to live.
Their mission is to work successfully with their customers and communities to provide exceptional services and good-quality living environments. To achieve this, they uphold five core values: Inclusion, Collaboration, Kindness, Customer Focus, and Adaptability.
Since 2023, Greatwell Homes has implemented a ground-breaking solution that not only enhances tenant understanding and engagement, but improves outcomes during these financially challenging times. Read on to learn how it worked for them…
The challenge
Managing income collection and arrears is a critical responsibility of every housing association. But the cost-of-living crisis has made the task more complex, with income officers having to collect rent arrears effectively while supporting tenants in a caring way. This emphasises the need to implement technology to improve and streamline the process, and personalise interactions to deliver relevant, timely engagement that meets tenants’ requirements.
In 2021, Greatwell Homes adopted Voicescape Collections to work alongside their legacy income analytics product. There was just one problem: using two separate systems caused friction within their specialised team. Officers spent a significant amount of time trying to navigate both systems and interpret the data across the different platforms.
“The analytics system was doing OK, and our arrears performance was good, but we’re always looking to do better. We were keen to explore the market to find a cost-effective solution that would improve efficiencies within our team and deliver the next step in our organisation’s journey.”
– Chris Holloway, Head of Housing and Neighbourhoods at Greatwell Homes
Added to that, the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the inefficiency and cost of printing and mailing weekly reminder letters, plus the younger generation’s preference to communicate by text message. So when Chris Holloway joined Greatwell Homes in 2018, he worked with the team to assess their income collections strategy.
“We wanted to analyse our people, processes, and performance holistically, and adopt a more efficient solution that would meet the needs of our tenants, give back time to our officers, and save the organisation money.”
– Chris Holloway, Head of Housing and Neighbourhoods at Greatwell Homes
The solution
Greatwell Homes sought an end-to-end solution that would review individual tenant behaviours and risks before automating the relevant stages of the arrears management process. In November 2022, their Income Services Manager, Katherine Goodwin, did some market research comparing their previous provider with other providers in the market. That’s when they discovered Voicescape Caseload Manager.
“What really attracted us to Voicescape was their innovation and desire to deliver the best. The thing that really gained our interest was the use of behavioural science and nudge theory. That’s something that we had undertaken in previous years and seen success with. Because we have an existing positive relationship with the team at Voicescape through the successful implementation of Voicescape Collections, it put us in a great position when it came to making the decision on how we’d look at our whole collections approach.”
“We could see the value of Voicescape Collections and how it was allowing us to engage better with our customers. We had a higher success rate of customers calling back to pay their rent. To take our rent arrears management strategy to newer levels of efficiency and financial performance, we knew that Voicescape Caseload Manager was the next logical step.”
– Katherine Goodwin, Housing and Income Services Manager at Greatwell Homes
How Voicescape Caseload Manager works
Voicescape Caseload Manager is an award-winning, arrears management and engagement solution that intelligently automates tenant engagement. It ingests and analyses resident data, while its AI and ML algorithm identifies risk and determines the optimum intervention for each resident. This ranges from ‘no engagement needed’, manual officer intervention or, when an automated contact is optimal, the solution will do it on your behalf.
Once an automated intervention is identified as driving the optimal outcome, the right message is delivered at the right time, via the right method of contact – either by text or call – to maximise engagement, improve income recovery, and prevent further tenant arrears. These automated actions allow you to recover more debt at a lower cost and with a better customer experience, while freeing up significant amounts of time for officers to focus on customers who require manual intervention.
The solution enabled Greatwell Homes to deliver a smaller and more accurate manual workload, driving positive outcomes for their teams, tenants, and organisation.
“Voicescape Caseload Manager uses live machine learning to understand previous payment habits and predict what the future payment habits of that customer will be. It will then make a bespoke recommendation to us on how to contact that customer, when to contact that customer, and by what format – such as an email, letter, or phone call.”
“We provided Voicescape with two years worth of historical payment data, so even from day one, machine learning allowed us to begin helping tenants based on robust and effective decision making . This allowed us to switch to a much more nuanced approach to income collection.”
- Chris Holloway, Head of housing and Neighbourhoods at Greatwell Homes
The benefits of Voicescape Caseload Manager
- Spend more time focusing on vulnerable tenants who require additional support
- Hyper personalise each intervention based on tenant behaviours and engagement history to maximise the likelihood of customer engagement and payment
- Reduce the amount of manual tasks and leverage your resources more effectively
- Reduce the number of tenants in rent arrears
- Future-proof your organisation with artificial intelligence and machine learning
- Support officer mental health and wellbeing to create resilience and retain staff
The results
Income officers at Greatwell Homes were immediately impressed with Voicescape Caseload Manager and Collections. Our continued support via webinars and live demos were helpful too, providing practical tips on how to use and get the most out of the systems.
Since implementing Voicescape Caseload Manager, the team now spends more time with tenants who require one-on-one support, and less time managing two completely different systems. The single, simple dashboard with rich visualisations also allows officers to accelerate case diagnostics and overall decision making.
Voicescape has helped the income team in being proactive in contacting customers, allowing them time to help customers who require additional support and offering early intervention to customers falling into arrears.
Michael Downing, Income Recovery Officer at Greatwell Homes
Ultimately, officers can delve deeper into high-level debt and complex cases – one of the main reasons Greatwell Homes invested in the solution. Better yet, automated caseloads ensure that work isn’t disrupted when an officer is on leave, eliminating the need for the rest of the team to take on the extra workload.
"Our income process is non-traditional. We’ve now completely moved away from sending weekly letters to tenants as that way of doing things is no longer fit for purpose. We know people just don’t respond to letters. They respond to texts, phone calls, emails, and face-to-face contact. Voicescape has really helped us to look at our internal process and make it more fluid. We have 100% confidence in Voicescape Caseload Manager.”
“Their customer success team has also been excellent. As soon as we implemented Voicescape Caseload Manager, weekly meetings were arranged between their team and ours. The customer service is excellent. Any time we’ve identified and reported an issue, it’s been resolved straight away. The team has been really supportive.”
– Katherine Goodwin, Housing and Income Services Manager at Greatwell Homes
Ready to modernise your operations
The cost-of-living crisis is taking its toll, and housing associations have a duty to support tenants. By utilising modern tools that drive operational efficiencies, your organisation will maintain a solid financial position – even in the face of tough financial challenges.
Get in touch with us today and take the first step towards revolutionising your arrears management process.
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