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Customer Relationship Management – Why a Housing Management Solution Alone is not Enough
There are two factors that are high on the agenda of any housing organisation; first is the quality of the service that they deliver to their residents and second is the value for money that they deliver as an organisation.
At times, these two goals may seem to be mutually exclusive and many housing organisations struggle to find ways of streamlining processes and driving efficiencies, while not becoming detached and losing the personal touch.
The Contact Centre
The Contact Centre has been a major contributor in driving efficiencies in housing organisations. It has enabled a highly effective front-line service to be created for all residents' enquiries where economies of scale can be realised.The Contact Centre has been able to relieve the individual service departments from the burden of having to field initial enquiries and therefore provided them with the additional capacity to perform their primary tasks and deliver service to residents.
However, separating the first point of call from the service delivery teams could result in a disjointed service, with the front-line not able to provide the level of personal knowledge about a particular ongoing case or of other contacts with the resident.
Managing Residents, Not Just Homes
The traditional housing management systems that are at the heart of every housing organisation do not necessarily help in this matter. These systems were designed, and are used, to manage properties and tenancies and not necessarily the relationship that the organisation has with its residents.They focus on managing the asset, the tenancy, the collection of rents, and tasks and activities that are core to the property. They may have limited ways of capturing detailed information about residents, especially those who are not tenants and the variety of interactions that take place between organisation and residents.
One Organisation, One Relationship
This is the reason that many housing organisations are turning to Customer Relationship Management systems (CRM).CRM records information about the resident – all of the times they phone in, who they spoke to, what their queries were, the outcome of the calls and the multiplicity of tasks and activities that have been undertaken on their behalf. CRM provides the whole organisation with a holistic view of both the resident and the property and the services that they interact with. It allows the organisation to manage and develop the relationship with the resident rather than this being fragmented.
The significant benefit that CRM delivers is its ability to create ‘One Organisation, One Relationship’ – it enables:
- conversations held between Contact Centre Advisors and the resident to be shared with their housing officer or surveyor
- progress on cases to be captured centrally and made accessible to anyone in the organisation who may be speaking with the resident
- a personal relationship to be developed across the whole organisation.
Connecting The Whole Organisation With The Resident
As housing organisations look to streamline more processes, and develop the Contact Centre to take more enquiries and deliver a personal service, CRM is an essential tool.It changes the whole perspective on customer service by placing the resident at the heart of both the processes and the systems used to execute these processes. It stops interactions being focused around a particular case or transaction and enables them to be focused on the resident, their needs and your organisation's relationship with them.
It enables each step of a process to be assigned to the right individual or department to deal with, and allows activities to be monitored and progressed so that the service delivery to the resident does not become disjointed. All information collected is stored centrally and can be made available for others to see as appropriate, so the resident is never asked the same question twice and everyone can be aware of what is going on.
By utilising CRM, it is possible for housing organisations to deliver a quality and personal service to its residents, while making the necessary changes to streamline processes, improve efficiency and deliver value for money.
For more information on how to implement CRM within your organisation and to seamlessly integrate this into the tools used within your Contact Centre, please contact the Omfax team on 01869 242967 or email us at info@omfax.co.uk
