How long have Together used RentSense and how has it helped over the years, and through the pandemic?

As Together we have been using RentSense since 2017 (and Pennine, pre-merger since 2011). It helped us prioritise caseload and when we merged it helped break down silos across different teams and ensure we were identifying the right accounts for contact.  

How do officers find using RentSense?

They would not be without RentSense, they are able to work better as a team, and help each other with their workload. They know and trust the recommendations, and they also like the pace of change we get with RentSense.

How has it helped performance and tenants over the years?

RentSense has helped by targeting the right tenants that need help. It has freed up their time so they can be proactive and deal with as rules as they are presented. This means they are targeting on need rather than the values, so the tenants that need more help are getting it.

The reports also help, so we can see the accounts that have been flagging repeatedly, so they are prioritised.

For staff RentSense gives them the opportunity to intervene early, and the rules indicate what the issue is.

How has it helped performance and tenants over the years?

They would not be without RentSense, they are able to work better as a team, and help each other with their workload. They know and trust the recommendations, and they also like the pace of change we get with RentSense.

What’s your longer term view for arrears performance and targets, in what is a challenging environment?

In the pandemic we were contacted by people that had never struggled to pay before, I expect there will be another wave of that with the cost of living crisis. They did not know what to expect from us as a landlord, whether we would work with them or take them to court straight away. Once they realised we would work with them, they were grateful and worked with us, and we don’t want to lose that ethos.

What we do with RentSense and all that we have built in automation is geared towards to getting in contact with the customer at regular intervals and creating opportunities for that contact to resolve the issue. And this helps support us in preventing tenancy turnover, including evictions.

How is the cost of living crisis impacting your tenants and staff?

Staff are feeling the effects of this as well, especially when they talk to tenants. We usually have an answer for most things, but we do feel at the moment that it is getting harder and the tools we can help customers with are getting fewer.

For some tenants they cannot see the end in sight and this can cause anxiety and depression. There are more customers getting upset, and staff are having to cope with this. So we are very mindful of this so we are putting things in place for tenants and staff before the winter, including local partnerships. The automation is helping us deal with the increasing complexity of our customers’ needs.

Why did you consider using the automation module with RentSense?

The research we did around Universal Credit (UC), a few years ago, showed us that calls are taking three times longer as they were more complex, and that tenants claiming UC was increasing along with the volume of arrears cases.

We could not afford to tackle this by adding more people, we needed to do something else. Officers required more time for conversations with tenants so they could get to the root of the problem, and we did not want to see caseload increase to unmanageable levels, as this would add more pressure.  

Automation has helped us free up staff time for quality conversations, whilst also helping us trigger positive responses from customers who receive automated contact. We see regular heartbeat patterns of customer engagement and payments on our website when automated messages have been sent.

What were your key objectives for automation?

We wanted to ensure caseloads remain manageable for the team, so we can reach those tenants that need intervention each week.

We also wanted more time for support and conversations with tenants to help them get back on track. But we also wanted to ensure a proactive and consistent approach to customers. For example with new tenancies at sign up they receive so much information it can be overwhelming. So we make the time for conversations with them in their first few weeks to ensure they understand they understand their responsibilities around paying their rent.

We also wanted to maintain our professional development programme, so having the time to loan out officers to other departments, so they can develop other skills was important too.

How has automation helped your income team?

It has helped in a number of ways. It typically automates around 20% of cases every week, in turn helping ensure we have very high completion rates across the team.

But the timing of using automation was also important, as we started through the pandemic, and it helped us create more personal customer contact throughout the process, for example we are able to create specific texts and escalate accordingly.

It has also helped with the culture of the team, as the time for conversations has increased, so the quality of contact has risen, and its now less of a culture of escalation and more about intervention. The more time we have with tenants the more tenancies we can sustain.

What has automation done to help Together and its customers?

It has helped us get speak with customers at critical times and driven personal contact, such as pre-NOSP and pre-court, helping us improve tenancy sustainability.

Through automation customers have access when they want it, and we are seeing more people using our website as they have the opportunity for better digital access. We see this reflected in high engagement online after automated messages have been sent.

Would you recommend automation to other RentSense users?

Yes, of course. It regularly removes 20% of workload, and I would need a further 6 officers to cover that caseload. And our caseload has dropped overtime since having automation.

Do you have any stats on how automation and RentSense has helped Together?

You can see our caseload drop since we have used Intelligent Automation, so we can ensure the team have a manageable caseload. This year already we are averaging over 90% completion rates across the team, without automation that would be 75%.