DELIVERING ONLINE CUSTOMER SERVICESJayne Hilditch

Updated December 2014

DECEMBER 15, 2014 1

DIFFERENT APPROACHES TO ONLINE SERVICES:

The only way

A choice of ways

The preferred way

“make it so good, people who can, choose to use it.

“make it so good, people who can, choose to use it.

ONLINE SERVICES:

▸Customers have asked for it.

▸Offers a 24/7 channel to customers

▸Reduce the cost to serve

▸ 2009 Audit Commission/PWC report on 19 Local Authorities transaction costs

- Post £12.10

- Face to Face £10.53

- Phone £3.39

- Online £0.08

▸ A PhD thesis could be written (and probably has).

▸ Lots of exchanging ignorances : its not been done at scale in housing yet.

▸ We’re measuring as we roll-out, so we can start to answer those questions

WHAT HAVE WE DONE…

PICTURE OF BREAD AND BUTTER

BREAD & BUTTER… (FOR THE CUSTOMER)

▸Accounts: Rent & service charge statements Parking / garage and sundry charges HB statement Make a payment using our own payment gateway

▸Repairs: Request a repair – integrates with back-office workflow View repairs reported & completed Visibility over common parts Upload a photo of the problem Feedback on the contractors performance Book a repair appointment slot

▸Contact info specific to that customer

OLD WORLD

… website was a PR/Marketing thing… mobile not considered

NEW WORLD

… digital services… mobile is king

BREAD & BUTTER… (FOR THE ORGANISATION)

▸Scale-able web hosting

▸Real time data

▸Top notch security & identity verification

▸Analytics in real time

▸Admin suite

▸Test/Demo environments with fakify data

TRANSFORMING PAYMENTS WITH MY TVH

Old: using AllPay (the HA market leader) New: MyTVH Payments

£7.8M pa by debit card over the phone

3.5 minutes per phone call 3.5 minute call, AND they’re signed up to MyTVH with details saved for online payment next time.

25,000 phone payments per year(that’s 1 FTE : 42 working weeks pa)

We’re measuring the phone payments & online payment volumes in real time

49.5p per transaction 29.5p per transaction

14 days to get cleared funds 3 days to get cleared funds

Manual upload interface for the receipt Automatic interface for the receipt

Customer account : takes 3 days to show Customer account : shows immediately

TRANSFORMING PAYMENTS WITH MY TVH

And it’s a thing of beauty…

DATA ANALYTICS

People are using it:

▸75% are return visits. Compared to 7% in old system

Tech Stuff:

▸Mobile : 44% of visits

▸Apple devices outnumber Android devices. Amazingly.

▸IE6 is dead. And IE7 & IE8 not far behind. Important to know

this for browser testing.

WHAT WE’VE LEARNED: ABOUT THE PROCESS

▸Procurement headaches can be overcome: G-cloud.

▸Skill mix is vital: a multi-disciplinary team sees blind spots.

▸Beware the curse of knowledge: the customer has no idea about your internal departments.

▸Beware of in-expert enthusiasts with strong feelings about screen layouts. User-experience design is a skill informed by data over opinion.

▸A good development partner will challenge you: that feels weird, but results in a better product.

ROAD MAP…

▸Repairs:

▸ Upload a photo

▸ Book an appointment online

▸ Give feedback on a repair

▸ Alerts & status updates

▸A communications dashboard

▸Service charge statements

▸Searchable knowledge base: can I?