Silva uses RentSense to Help Reduce Arrears and Sustain more Tenancies

Silva, a housing association with around 6,500 homes in Bracknell, have used RentSense to enable their income team to intervene at the earliest stages of debt, so they can help tenants impacted by the pandemic and reduce arrears.

A recent housing article penned by Silva described how due to the pandemic they as an organisation, and many in the sector, had adopted a more empathetic approach to rent arrears.

“This (approach) has been facilitated by RentSense, it allows us to identify customers having problems paying their rent much earlier than we could in the past, so we are able to have conversations straight away and support them,” comments Tom Mason, Lead Customer Relations Partner at Silva.

The pandemic impacted many of Silva’s customers making it more difficult to pay their rent. But the customer relations team focused on supporting the customers that really needed their support and time.

The team have always had a culture of helping one another. RentSense just makes it that much easier, from the easy to use interface to the accessibility. Because of this the team complete their workload every week. As a result arrears are down and more tenancies sustained.”

Tom Mason, Lead Customer Relations Partner at Silva.

The system has also provided more readily available insight, this has helped Tom and the team be more focused around campaigns and support.

“We always had good reports, but we were reliant on other teams to pull and create that data for us. With RentSense and its reports we are in control of our own data, so we can generate what we need. This helps us with campaigns such as switching tenants across to direct debits.”

“The team at Silva have gone above and beyond for their customers throughout the pandemic, and they should take the credit. RentSense helps identify who they need to speak with but Tom and the team have really delivered with the new arrears approach.” Stated Paul Evans, Chief Commercial Director at Mobysoft.