We know that things don’t always go as planned in the social housing sector. All tenants – whether they’re living in social housing or not – are expected to pay their rent on time. The reality is, this doesn’t always happen. And that’s where rent collection software comes in.
Disability allowances, Universal Credit and zero-hour contracts can make things extremely complicated for your tenants. But by embracing the latest digital technology, you can streamline your processes and make rent collection easier for residents.
Here, we discuss how our rent collection and arrears management software, Voicescape Collections, can help you:
- Use technology to engage with customers around their rent in the most powerful way
- Have better, more positive conversations around rent arrears
- Better prioritise the resources of your income officers
- Monitor results in real time to more quickly recover outstanding rent arrears
- Free up time to manage alternative payment arrangements and have more engaged conversations
Better prioritise resources
As a social housing landlord, you’ll know better than anyone that the earlier you intervene and engage with tenants getting into arrears, the better. Be that as it may, attempting to manually contact each individual tenant can be incredibly unproductive. Finding the right customer record, the right phone number, and everything else you may need to make outbound calls is often inefficient – and that’s before mentioning just how time-consuming leaving voicemails and text messages can be.
When you do manage to get through to customers, the calls can often be stressful and unproductive for both parties. Voicescape Collections breaks that cycle by automating the hundreds of tasks required to reach your customers, streamlining the entire process for your income officers. Since they’ll no longer have to spend precious time outbound calling invalid numbers and leaving messages, the calls they’ll now be dealing with are inbound , from people in arrears who are electing to speak with you and are thus, far more conducive to more meaningful engagement. What’s more, your income team will finally have the capacity to focus on the more complex cases.
Monitor results in real time
If your officers spend their day using the traditional method of manually contacting tenants, there’s a good chance income managers aren’t able to view live results of call activity. Being unable to monitor these results in real time will ultimately prevent you from making the kind of data-driven decisions that ensure tenants meet rent deadlines. If this sounds like your social housing association, this needs to change. Using our powerful rent collection engagement software, you’ll be able to view the entire call process as it’s happening.
Income managers will be able to run numerous types of reports and subsequent campaigns, such as different calls to those recently in arrears or long standing cases, or those who listen to the message and then do not engage. The system is highly configurable to meet almost any customer use case, but our Customer Success Team will be on-hand to advise you on the best practices to maximise income and operational efficiency.
Free up time for more engaged conversations
By better prioritising resources and altering the way you engage with tenants, your income officers will have more time to focus on having engaged conversations that drive positive outcomes. If a tenant feels valued, comfortable and listened to, they’ll often feel more encouraged to speak about their rent arrears and remain co-operative. Equally importantly, by engaging in better conversations and collecting with care, you’ll be helping the mental wellbeing of both your customers and your team.
Facilitating communication at the earliest opportunity will prevent the situation progressing into something that’s costly and unmanageable. Any conversations about alternative payment arrangements can be had well in advance. This helps your residents to remain engaged in a positive way, making tenancies more sustainable.
How Voicescape can help
At Voicescape, we help social housing landlords like you to build and ultimately maintain sustainable tenancies. Our Collections solution allows you to maximise operational efficiency and engagement so that you can retain your tenants and reduce rent arrears at the same time.
Want to learn more about Voicescape Collections? Contact us today for details.