How Sovereign Network Group (Formerly Network Homes) Enhanced Former Tenant Arrears Collections

Network Homes (who has since merged with Sovereign) is a large housing association with more than 21,000 affordable homes for over 38,000 tenants across London and Hertfordshire. Since 1974, they’ve put people at the heart of everything they do, reinvesting their profits into building more affordable homes and delivering high-quality services. 

Read on to discover how Network Homes is using Voicescape Collections to support their tenants during the cost-of-living crisis. 

The challenge 

During the pandemic, many households fell behind with their rent – some for the first time – leading to a rise in former tenant arrears (FTA). Network Homes had assigned a dedicated FTA officer to handle low-level debt, escalating high-level debt to an external collections agency to manage the increasing workload and support with debt collection. But this approach proved ineffective for the social landlord. 

In October 2022, Network Homes began looking for a solution that would allow them to quickly engage with large numbers of tenants who had fallen behind on their rent payments and increase collections of these arrears without the need to increase staff resources. 

The solution 

In their research for a solution, Network Homes began looking at Voicescape Collections and were keen to learn more about it. They arranged a meeting with our Commercial Director, Peter Hudson, to gain an in-depth understanding of the platform and how it worked for other housing associations. 

Voicescape Collections automates the numerous tasks required to reach customers in arrears – like calling, sending a text, or leaving a voice message. It transforms labour intensive, costly and, often, ineffective outbound calling activity into productive and efficient inbound calls, giving income officers more time to provide one-on-one support to those tenants who need it most. This is especially important during these financially challenging times.

Network Homes now uses Voicescape Collections to collect former tenant debt and hopes to roll it out to tackle current tenant arrears in the near future. 

The results 

Network Homes set themselves the target to collect at least 10% of the former tenant debt which dated back to 2020 equating to a total of £1.5 million. Previously much of this would have been written off, with the remainder being sent to external debt collection agencies. The objective was to find a solution that was not only more cost-effective and cost-saving but also would transform the level of their service delivery – that’s where Voicescape came in.

Our Customer Success team were instrumental in ensuring a smooth implementation for Network, they organised regular meetings with the client advising on best practice to tailor the collections process right up until the solution was switched on.

“Working with Voicescape on our project was a great experience. The implementation process, spanning three months, was remarkably smooth. From the meticulous collection of our requirements to the creation of a well-thought-out plan, Voicescape demonstrated a high level of professionalism and expertise."

Rachael Elston, ITT Project Manager at Network

In 10 months since Voicescape went live, our Collections solution has been used to target particularly hard-to-recover FTA that would otherwise have been written off. In this time, Network Homes have been able to recover over £164k, which puts the housing association right on track to achieve their target! Not only this, but our solution was able to reduce their active FTA arrears caseload by a whopping 63.5%. The system is currently being used to recover arrears from former fixed term tenants who have been given new tenancies, Voicescape has helped dramatically reduce this type of FTA as the debt didn’t automatically move over with the new tenancies. These were arrears that were due to be written off due to the difficulty surrounding the recovery.

"It was a collaborative journey marked by efficiency, effective communication, and a seamless execution of the project plan. Voicescape truly understands the details of our needs and delivered a solution that exceeded expectations”.

Rachael Elston, ITT Project Manager at Network

Our solution has provided the FTA team with much-needed ease as it has been able to remove the heavy lifting and time-consuming activities when trying to contact former residents in negative balances. If you’d like to learn how Voicescape can help you collect rent arrears efficiently with our award winning solutions, then get in touch!