Harnessing the Power of Payment Links at Yorkshire Housing

Yorkshire Housing are the largest housing association based solely in Yorkshire, owning and managing around 20,000 homes. Driven by a customer-obsessed attitude, they strive to create homes where people don’t just live but thrive independently within their community. 

Yorkshire Housing has always been committed to forward-thinking ways of working, “using innovative tech to go green and improve [their] customer experience”. Voicescape Collections has been helping them achieve this, but an increasing number of failed direct debits on former tenant arrears (FTA) called for an additional layer of innovation.

In November 2022, we facilitated a payment link integration which gave Yorkshire Housing’s collections approach the boost it needed. Read on to see how they streamlined the payments process for both former tenants and their income officers. 

The Challenge

Yorkshire Housing were using Voicescape Collections to help their income officers collect both current and former tenant arrears, harnessing automation and prompting inbound calls to increase efficiencies. That being said, failed direct debits will always be a natural byproduct of this process. But the problem-solving nature of their team sparked an internal deliberation on how they could improve what happens next in the payments cycle. 

The team’s main concerns were about resources. Floods of inbound calls from tenants wanting to pay their outstanding balance, or non-value exchanges, were inundating their income officers and taking them away from dealing with other more complex cases. Yorkshire Housing therefore decided to adopt a text message-only method. 

One of Yorkshire Housing’s core priorities as an organisation is to be proactive, dealing with issues before they happen to improve the customer experience, prevent escalations, and increase income. In order to fulfil this, they approached Voicescape to discuss ways in which their text-only approach could be enhanced. We proposed payment link integration as a solution, bringing together the technologies of Voicescape Collections and our strategic partner, allpay. Now, their text messages would be sent with an embedded link to help customers make payments directly with just a few clicks. 

The Solution

Voicescape and allpay connected with Yorkshire Housing’s in-house digital team to swiftly set up the integration. Soon after, they were able to start sending text messages directly from Voicescape Collections, embedded with a payment link that takes their customers to a website landing page. Here, reference details and payment information are pre-populated, leaving only the customer’s card details to enter – saving time and effort for both the income officer and tenant.  

“The introduction of customised payment links into the allpay solution has transformed several of our products. The aim has always been to make the collection process as streamlined and efficient for tenants as possible. This innovation has allowed those using it to create a seamless and flexible payment experience for tenants whilst significantly reducing failed transactions and freeing up valuable inhouse resources to focus on proactive and preventative interactions.”

Matt Marskell, Sales and Marketing Director at allpay 

The Results

The introduction of the pay-by-link integration with Voicescape Collections and allpay has made a meaningful and lasting impact at Yorkshire Housing. As well as freeing up invaluable time and capacity amongst their officers, they managed to significantly increase their income. From this method alone, they collected over £450,000 in the 2023/2024 financial year. 

“We are happy with the outcomes provided so far, and look forward to exploring more of what voicescape has to offer by producing system generated campaigns to prevent arrears and allow us to implement early intervention that supports our customers”.

 Yasmin Lockhart, Income Services Manager at Yorkshire Housing

What’s more, the efficiencies created have also helped Yorkshire Housing fulfil their core commitment to provide an excellent customer experience – preventing the need for tenants to contact the organisation with a quick, three-step payment process driven by pay-by-link technology.

“The Income Collection team at Yorkshire Housing has implemented Voicescape, a new system that automates text messages to customers whose direct debit payments have failed, as identified by allpay. 

 Voicescape sends customers a convenient pay-by-link, allowing them to make payments in a user-friendly manner .  The system generates significant income for the company whilst freeing up valuable time for advisors, enabling them to focus on more complex cases.  As a result, the company benefits from improved efficiency, enhanced cash flow and better customer service.”

Mary Davoile, Rent Account Manager at Yorkshire Housing

The Future

Yorkshire Housing are keen to expand the potential of this technology, turning their attention to Voicescape Caseload Manager next. They explained “it’s another convenient way to pay for our customers and builds further on our trusted partnerships.”