Karbon Homes owns and manages around 32,000 homes across the North East and Yorkshire. With diverse communities to serve, the housing association is committed to understanding their customers' varying circumstances and needs.
Since its formation back in 2017, Karbon Homes has focused on three strategic aims: providing as many good homes as possible, delivering excellent customer service, and shaping strong and sustainable places for their communities. Having the funds available to deliver on them is vitally important.
Read on to learn how Karbon Homes overhauled their rent arrears collection process with Voicescape Collections…
The challenge
Karbon Homes began implementing our Voicescape Collections solution back in March 2023 after hearing about us through word of mouth and attending various conferences. Karbon had just undertaken an income maximisation service review at the time, embarking on a project to delve into customer research it had commissioned. This looked at the journey its customers took around the arrears collection process, with a view to devising efficiency improvements and initiatives.
“We discovered that customers really valued the telephone contact our customer accounts team had with them, and after hearing of Voicescape’s success with other organisations, we engaged with their team to start our journey.”
Rob Jeffreys, Head of Income at Karbon Homes
The solution
Voicescape Collections helps local authorities and housing associations ethically and effectively improve their rent arrears collections. It replaces inefficient manual processes – like sending letter reminders or making outbound calls – with automated interactions that drive inbound contact. In doing so, it also provides income officers with more capacity to spend one-on-one time with tenants who require higher levels of intervention.
Karbon Homes is using Voicescape Collections for both current and former customers arrears. The housing association didn't have too many additional requirements in terms of configuration, and highlighted the solution’s ability to align with how it gathers and handles its data as a major plus. The customer accounts team found that integrating and implementing the tool was very straightforward – noting that the handover was particularly seamless.
The result
Karbon Homes has been using Voicescape Collections every day since its go-live date in July 2023, with the team finding it a valuable and worthwhile asset. The results so far look incredibly positive: after just two months, the organisation has tripled its conversion rate, with 58% of all customers who received a successful call opting to transfer and having at least one conversation with an officer (up from 20%). This is above the average result of 40%.
In fact, the outcomes have been so positive that Karbon Homes’ compliance team is considering what Voicescape can do for them too.
“Once we were through the testing phase, it was really impressive how quickly things moved. Now we’re using it daily, and we don’t know what we’d do without it. Not only has Voicescape Collections significantly improved our call conversions, but our team enjoys using it too. I’d like to express our thanks to Voicescape, and especially the frontline managers who have helped make this such a smooth process.”
Greg Gidley, Income Team Leader at Karbon Homes