How Greatwell Homes Dramatically Improved Its Annual Arrears Figures

Greatwell Homes, a not-for-profit housing association with over 5,000 customers, provides high-quality living environments and vital support services. These services proved to be even more essential when COVID-19 hit, but as resources stretched and budgets tightened, engaging with customers became challenging. As a result, many of them fell into arrears.

Read on to discover how Greatwell Homes improved its annual arrears figures, without expanding its existing team…

The challenge

When COVID-19 struck and resources were stretched thin, Greatwell Homes recognised that a standard one-size-fits-all approach to customer engagement was no longer effective. Their team couldn’t afford to waste valuable time manually contacting customers who didn’t want to be contacted. Instead, they needed to focus their energy on supporting those who required personal, human intervention during the most isolating months of the pandemic.

The solution

Chris Holloway, Head of Housing & Neighbourhoodsat Greatwell Homes, has had an interest in behavioural economics and nudge theory for a number of years. In his search for a cost-effective solution to the challenge described above, he had a discussion with Dan Morgan, Account Manager at Voicescape, about its use in a social housing setting. Voicescape Collections was the main topic of conversation.

How it works

Voicescape Collections is an ethical and effective means of improving arrears collection rates, backed by behavioural insights built up over thousands of successful campaigns. It automates the tasks required to reach customers, and transforms costly and ineffective outbound calling activity into productive inbound calls. This gives your income recovery officers the time they need to focus on having more engaged conversations that drive positive results for both you and your customers.

This solution acted as part of Greatwell Homes’ ‘Transforming our Future’ strategy, and the results since using the technology have been incredible…

“Voicecsape fills that gap in your team, so you can deliver elements of the staff function at a more affordable cost."

Chris Holloway | Head of Housing & Neighbourhoods

The Results

In previous years, arrears performance at Greatwell Homes had been static at 2.11% in 2018/19 and 2.84% in 2019/20. These figures dropped to 2.01% in 2020/21 when Voicescape Collections was implemented, and in 2021/22, Greatwell Homes experienced a significant reduction at 1.85%.

The number of evictions made also dropped. In 2018/19, the team evicted 20 customers, followed by 6 in 2019/20. But in 2020/21, 0 customers were evicted, drastically minimising eviction costs for the team. Greatwell Homes has also seen a significant reduction in static debt owing to the capacity that Voicescape Collections provides.

Ultimately, these results prevented the housing association from having to increase the size of its team during financially challenging times, and enabled them to offer the same high-quality support services that they are known for.

“Our partnership with Voicescape has delivered huge efficiencies for officers as the system brings customer interactions in to us, rather than officers having to chase residents to discuss arrears. The way in which we have configured the system ensures that when customers are connected to officers, they are ready to have a positive discussion about their account. This has led to significant improvements in our arrears collection, whilst also allowing officers the capacity to concentrate on those customers who need more targeted support.”  

Chris Holloway | Head of Housing & Neighbourhoods