Automating outbound contact in the rent collection process. Chris Roberts Head of Customer Service Centre Home Group LTD.

Automating outbound contact in the rent collection process.

Chris RobertsHead of Customer Service Centre Home Group LTD

Introduction

Home Group, a social enterprise and a charity with a turnover of over £325m, is one of the UK’s largest providers of high quality housing and supported housing services and products.

Home Group's role is to provide general needs housing, supported housing services, and home ownership options targeted towards helping some of society’s most vulnerable people take control of their own lives:

Home Group houses over 120,000 people a year, managing 55,000 homes in over 200 local authority areas in England, Scotland and Wales.

Each year this includes working with almost 30,000 vulnerable people through 500+ supported housing, justice and health services

Why change was important?

• 34 FTE working arrears

• 25% of customers successfully contacted

• 140k spent on letters following failed contact

• Generic approach for every customer

Effort to manage arrears

Cost vs. Effort ?

Calls are sent daily, if no contact made SMS and letters sent at the end of the week.

Call 2 Collect Process

Manual

Manual

FTERequired

FTERequired

17.3

To deliver 1865 customer conversations more resource and effort would be required

within a manual outbound process.

2237 accounts1865 Customer Conversations

Automation

Automation

FTERequired

FTERequired

4.3

Automation v Manual

5096 contact attempts made

Benefits

Customer verbatim collected via Bright Surveys has highlight the most frequent words used following the immediate automated contact.

“Stopped me from worrying”

“She understood me; she gave me all the information I needed”

Customer Feedback

Tailored Approach vs One size fits all

Next Steps

Questions