How Platform Housing Group Drastically Reduced No-Access Rates

Platform Housing Group (PHG) is one of the largest housing associations in the UK, with more than 47,000 homes across the country. Their mission is to build a better future by investing in affordable homes, as well as their communities and services. 

Platform Property Care (PPC), a subsidiary of PHG, is responsible for delivering the majority of the maintenance and compliance activities to all its customers and joint venture partners. But COVID-19 and the worsening cost of living crisis made providing some of these essential services a challenge. 

Read on to discover how PHG drastically reduced no-access rates in just a few months… 

Challenge 

In 2021, PHG were booking gas service appointments via a prescriptive method, where appointments and confirmations were sent to customers via letter and text. The customer would then contact the landlord if they wanted to rearrange their appointment. This outdated manual process naturally discouraged customers from rebooking. 

Concern around COVID-19 created additional pressures. A number of residents prevented engineers from entering their homes to conduct annual gas safety inspections – despite not rescheduling. These no-access visits cost PHG, and with inflation set to reach 11% by autumn 2022, the cost to serve appointments would have only increased as time went on. 

PHG eventually had to bring in additional resources to manually call customers and inform them that their gas service was overdue. This process was both costly and inefficient. 

Solution 

PHG has been using our technology for collections and customer satisfaction since 2016, and has a strong relationship with our team. On their regular catch-up calls, PHG had a conversation with our Account Manager, Lewis Murray, and Customer Success Manager, Vicky Clayton, about what else was possible with Voicescape. That’s when the compliance solution was introduced… 

How it works  

Voicescape Compliance is a groundbreaking solution designed to help compliance teams meet their statutory property maintenance requirements – in this case, annual gas safety checks. It automates the process of booking, confirming and rescheduling appointments with customers well before they happen. This prevents non-compliance and the cost of no-access visits. 

Now, if a PHG customer wants to rearrange a gas service appointment, they can simply reply to the automated SMS to be transferred to the relevant available team member and make the arrangement. This means customers no longer have to run through a number of Interactive Voice Response (IVR) options from the main line and wait in call queues. 

At PHG, this solution is used in addition to letters and SMS. 

"Voicescape has allowed us to change the way we schedule our gas servicing appointments – moving from a prescriptive approach to a consultative approach. We can now provide a better service for our customers and ultimately reduce our no-access. We can see, in real time, the customers that have confirmed appointments and those who still require contact. Having this level of information is truly changing how we work"

Lee Vernalls | Assistant Director of Business Development and Growth at PHG

Results

PHG has seen some incredible results since implementing Voicescape Compliance. First and foremost, they reduced the rate of no-access appointments by 24% in just four months! This has enabled their team to focus on the more complex cases where customers opt to speak about an issue.

"Voicescape has provided us with a faster, more proactive approach to engaging with our customers and having quality conversations to meet their requirements. Our access rates have increased, allowing us to book appointments that suit the customers whilst also managing our compliance. As a result, Voicescape has made a huge difference to morale within the team and increased our customer engagement using digital technology."

Tara Mitchell | Resource Scheduling Manager at PHG

The response from their customer has also been overwhelmingly positive.

“Customers find it simple to use and are quite impressed that there is no long wait time to get through.”

Lydia Harrison | Administrator at PHG

The team at PHG now has regular reviews with their dedicated Voicescape Account Manager and Customer Success Manager to look at results, identify strengths and challenges and benchmark against others in class. They then set objectives  to help them achieve their goals faster. 

Are you in the same position as PHG was in 2021? Get in touch with our team today to see how Voicescape Compliance can reduce your no-access rates!