From Half a Day to 15 minutes: How South Essex Homes Transformed Engagement

1.45 FTE

Unlocked with Campaign Manager by enabling SMS communication - reducing individual staff time spent on manual tasks.

61

 Completed surveys from younger tenants from 600 contacted, with a 10% success rate, better than previous traditional methods.  

15

 Minutes to schedule tenant SMS communication, compared with half a day for the previous manual letter process.  

Overview

South Essex Homes previously depended on manual, letter-based communications and now has a faster, more flexible way of reaching residents with Voicescape Campaign Manager.

The Challenge

South Essex Homes had limited options for communicating directly with tenants, relying primarily on letters and handling more than 6,000 inbound calls each month, communicating urgent updates, such as lift outages, was a highly manual process, with a single direct mail campaign taking up to half a day to complete. The organisation also recognised it was falling behind in the adoption of digital communication channels, limiting its ability to engage residents quickly, efficiently, and at scale.

"The only way of directly contacting residents before was by letter. So, if there was a lift outage, for example, a letter would be typed up in the office, printed out in the office, and somebody would have to take those printouts to that building and deliver them door by door." – Julia Pack, Communications Project Manager, South Essex Homes.

Relying on manual, letter-based communications often delayed important updates, with some formal notices arriving after their deadlines. This led to complaints and avoidable calls to the contact centre, placing further strain on already stretched teams. South Essex Homes recognised the need for a faster, more efficient and scalable way to communicate with residents.

“The moment I heard it was possible for us to contact residents via text, my ears pricked up because it’s something that I’ve wanted for a long time.” – Julia Pack, Communications Project Manager, South Essex Homes.

The Solution

For improving operations, implementing Voicescape Campaign Manager was essential to sending the one-way SMS messages they needed to residents; whether at-scale or targeted towards specific segments. Campaign Manager allowed them to contact residents via text, replacing the previous manual process of printing and delivering letters door-to-door for communications. This change transformed an arduous, half-day task for one person into a practically instantaneous one at just 15-minutes, freeing up other teams and making their communications with tenants more dynamic and immediate.

“It’s changed what was like a half day task for one person to a 15-minute task with much better results.” – Julia Pack, Communications Project Manager, South Essex Homes.

The team had several use cases for Campaign Manager, such as:

• Contacting residents using text for general one-way communications
• Notifying tenants about lift outages and other urgent issues
• Conducting targeted surveys
• Communicating changes to services
• Sending messages to specific blocks of flats or filtering by age group
• Providing reassurance messages, like for fly-tipping issues
• Promoting estate days and sending reminders for events

With Campaign Manager, they were able to utilise a whole new channel of digital communication and diversify how they contact residents previously unheard of.

The team is careful not to over-communicate and cause message fatigue, so they carefully manage message frequency.

The Results

Since starting implementation in March 2026, South Essex Homes has already seen improvements in operational efficiency and tenant engagement in the first 6 months.

Engagement impact from ad-hoc campaigns:

• Reduction in avoidable contact and tracing calls from tenants.
• Proactive communication keeps tenants informed and less likely to call with questions.
• A survey sent to under-30s via text resulted in 61 completed surveys from approximately 600 texts, which had a 10% response rate, better than previous methods and was a record for the organisation.

Resident impact:

• The texts created a sense of camaraderie among residents who would discuss the information they received with staff and neighbours directly.
• Campaign Manager helped support better turnouts for resident meetings and estate days, reducing follow-up calls from tenants asking for updates.

“Campaign Manager has been a game changer in how we communicate with residents.” – Julia Pack, Communications Project Manager, South Essex Homes.

“The new communication methods brought by Campaign Manager have allowed us to be more transparent with tenants and show more accountability from our side.”

Operational impact:

• Campaign Manager transformed the half–day task of delivering letters for urgent issues, like lift outages, into a 15-minute task with much better results - saving approximately 54.4 hours per week (equivalent to 1.45 FTE) with their new SMS capability.
• Campaign Manager allowed them to conduct targeted surveys. In one SMS ad-hoc campaign instance, South Essex Homes achieved a 10% response rate from 600 texts to younger tenants, which was a record for them and provided quality data and identified participants for a video project.

The change has freed up other teams, such as the tenancy team, to focus on the core issues at hand, as the communications aspect is handled by Julia’s team. It has made their jobs much more efficient and resulted in quicker, more up-to-date information for residents and greater transparency, which was not possible with the previous manual letter-run process.

“Campaign Manager has definitely added value. It's given us a new string to our bow and just made it so much easier for our team." – Julia Pack, Communications Project Manager, South Essex Homes.

“The team are delighted because it is freeing up their time and they're not having to do those door drops. And that's been a real game changer for lots of them."

The Future

Moving forward, the team is focused on improving how it tracks and attributes the success of text campaigns within Campaign Manager, particularly where calls to actions are completed through other teams. Additionally, they are looking to improve internal processes for managing tenant communications to avoid fatigue from over-texting tenants and promote their new version of their app, personalising messages by block.

“We’re only just starting to scratch the surface of what we can use it for.” – Julia Pack, Communications Project Manager, South Essex Homes.

They anticipate expanding the use of Voicescape, moving towards more digital communication to support their tenant base.

If you’d like to discuss how Voicescape Campaign Manager can help streamline your communication processes, please get in touch with us today.