5 Key Strategies for Housing Associations to Improve Customer Experience

People today may choose to communicate with their housing provider across various channels including phone, email, chat, SMS, social, and walk-ins. When they do reach out, they expect to receive the same level of service regardless of which channel they’re using. That service needs be simple, efficient, personalized, and consistent – at any place and any time. Housing providers who deliver on that expectation reap the benefits – increased satisfaction, deeper engagement, and improved loyalty.

So what are the strategies needed to deliver on customer expectations?

1. Provide true omnichannel:

Residents will choose an engagement method that works best for them wherever they are and whatever they’re doing. Phone, email, web chat, SMS, social, face-to-face – whatever the channel preference, the association must be equipped to deliver. Deliver, it is worth noting, means recognizing the customer and the issue, while engaging and helping them with the same standards of excellence across all channels.

2. Personalize the experience:

Be ready to provide a feeling of recognition and appreciation, by being able to recall the customer’s past interactions, and offer them the right options, at the right moment. This means having instant visibility into the full customer journey. With this information, the association can determine what the resident will want to do next and be proactive.

3. Resolve issues on the first contact

The notion of the “customer journey” is one of the biggest customer engagement buzzwords, both in housing and in contact centers in general. Today’s customer experiences cannot be viewed as a series of disparate, disconnected interactions; they must be viewed as part of a continuous, wholly integrated journey. One needs to be careful, however, not to confuse acceptance of the journey concept with tolerance of excessive interactions. The goal should always be to resolve a particular issue on the first contact.

4. Minimize customer effort:

Quick resolution is still of paramount concern for both residents and housing providers. Tenants do not want to be rushed off the line before their problem is solved, but they do not want to spend any more time or exert any more effort than is required in solving their problem. Gaps that create inefficiencies and increased effort – agents requiring customers to repeat information following transfers, lack of data about the resident’s past interactions, cumbersome business systems – are gaps that drive dissatisfaction.

5. Evolve with the times:

Customers change. Market conditions change. Channels change. When such change occurs, residents and tenants demand that the associations serving them evolve accordingly. If customers become comfortable using a new contact channel, they expect the association to not only offer that channel but to do so with the same commitment to a seamless, personalized, and proactive experience that is offered in the other channels.

Upstream Works for Finesse, an omnichannel agent workspace with management simplicity, is designed for the fully integrated customer journey and fosters this smart, simple and connected customer experience. Organizations that have implemented the solution have enjoyed very valuable benefits – on both sides of the interaction.

• Agents are more productive and successful
• Tenants are more satisfied and loyal
• The association gains efficiencies and visibility
• The organization gains a substantial ROI

Come and see Upstream Works Omnichannel Contact Center solution in action at Housing Technology 2018 Conference, Oxford, March 6-8, and learn how we can help your housing association meet its CX goals. Learn more: upstreamworks.com