According to a new survey by Omfax, while more than half of housing providers’ contact centres now routinely manage social media and just under half have a tenant portal, a significant proportion of providers have yet to integrate digital alongside their existing phone and face-to-face contact channels.
Omfax’s Graddon said, “Some housing providers are already well on their way to integrated, multi-channel service delivery, but there are still too many stories out there of tenants being ‘bounced around’ the organisation before their queries are answered.
“Disjointed IT systems that don’t allow a single view of the customer and operating structures that aren’t built around customer processes still present barriers to high-quality service delivery.”
Omfax’s survey also found that over 80 per cent of housing providers’ contact centres had seen volumes grow by five per cent during the past three years, 35 per cent now offer a 24/7 service, 50 per cent outsource part of their call-handling (mainly out-of-hours services), and from a web perspective, 80 per cent can handle repair enquiries, 60 per cent manage complaints and 50 per cent deal with rent enquiries.
