So you call up the housing repairs team and wait on the phone. Then they tell you to write down a reference number and to supply more images by email.

At the end of it all, you wonder why you didn’t just report it online in the first place…

Surely resetting your password for the umpteenth time would have been faster, right?

This is a familiar situation taken from our interviews with 80 residents from councils across England. 

When we asked residents why they don’t use existing report-a-repair online services, it was often down to one thing: having to remember and enter a username and password.

Call centres aren’t quicker

Oustanding housing repairs is a real source of stress and frustration for many.

We don’t want to worry about repairs. We want to report them as quickly as possible and be confident that it will be fixed in the next few days.

Logins create barriers and those barriers push us towards more easily accessible routes – like a phone call (or an email).

But calling isn’t quicker, it takes an average of 18 minutes to report by phone (with a 9-minute waiting time) and is often only available 9-5. So you’ll just have to wait until opening hours to make that report.

Better make a note…

…or adopt an online portal that removes the inconvenience of requiring a login – where you can enter all the information you need and get that reference number (emailed to you too) at a time that suits you. 

Whether it’s 8 AM or 3 AM (we aren’t judging) you can rest easy knowing your report has been received and will be addressed as soon as possible.

This option takes the stress away from residents who might struggle to call during working hours or who struggle to remember to call.

We need an accessible and inclusive solution

Some of the most vulnerable people in society live in social housing. They’re reliant on others, like family members, wardens or other support networks. Removing the login opens the door for members of that support network to report repairs on a resident’s behalf. 

Additionally, our research shows that people who have accessibility needs or are not native English speakers can struggle with the demands of a telephone call.  

For them, it’s easier to log something online with accessibility tools such as screen readers, increased font size and built-in translators. We’re pleased to say that our wording and journey have been tested and built with these user groups in mind.  

We’re not suggesting we do away with phone calls entirely. Of course, some users will need to report a repair by telephone. 

Additionally, offering an online housing repairs portal as a preferred option frees up other channels reducing call wait times for those who need to use this method of contact. 

Misconceptions about a login-free platform

From our extensive research, we know that login-free, passwordless access to an online housing repairs reporting tool is the solution residents prefer.

For housing managers, many have invested in technology and digital service adoption campaigns to drive users to online reporting over manually monitored channels such as emails and call centres to cut down operating costs and increase efficiencies of teams, allowing officers to focus more on scheduling and repairs, than recording and triaging inbound requests.

Yet, while we’ve all come to accept single sign-on (SSO) and praised its ease of use when it comes to logging into numerous digital platforms, passwordless access to online portals is often met with skepticism.

Below we’ve addressed two common misconceptions when it comes to login-free access.

Misconception 1: Won’t users abuse the service?

A common scenario we often address is the assumption that residents will want to report multiple issues, including non-repair-related ones. 

This could be, for example, spamming the service with general enquiries such as who their councillor is, when the bins are being emptied and so on. Yet, our research showed that 95% of all enquiries by phone to repairs teams were related to a repair. Research shows that having this kind of information freely available on your website will help reduce calls related to general enquiries by 29%. 

Misconception 3: It won’t cut down calls

From the research, we believe that we could increase digital uptake of 40-75% based on feedback from residents about an online housing repairs reporting platform and their own digital habits/ literacy. 

Currently, less than 20% of users report a housing repair online – this is due to:

• Lack of knowledge about the platform/ its existence 
• The need for a login and other details
• The misconception that calling is faster
• A lack of understanding of tenant/ landlord responsibilities

These issues can be tackled by ensuring there is adequate education on the platform and tenant/ landlord responsibilities, which I’ve covered in the next section.

But what I find really surprising is that currently, 40% of all calls are follow-ups about existing repairs – suggesting very high levels of failure demand which could easily be rectified through the features we’ve built into our platform such as:

• Reference numbers and email updates  to track the progress of a repair and reduce calls to request updates
• The ability for residents to choose, change and cancel their appointments to reduce missed appointments
• The ease of accessing all this information through a login-free system and email updates

Misconception 4: Users won’t adopt a system they don’t get

Combining our research with numerous journal articles reviewing the adoption of online portals, we’ve yet to see any evidence that users won’t use an online portal or a login-free approach. 

In fact, the data suggests that so long as there is trust between the council and residents and users are made aware of the existence and purpose of the platform, they will use it for its intended purpose especially if it’s easier to use and more accessible than other forms of reporting housing repairs.

As part of onboarding new councils, we also make recommendations on how those councils can inform users about the platform to help with adoption and channel shift – freeing up manned channels for more urgent requests and repairs work.

Promotion is the key to adoption

As mentioned in Misconception 4, making sure your tenants are aware of the online service is key to adoption. 

How can you encourage them to use it? 

What information and help do they need?  

Look at all the usual touch points, like rent statements, tenant sign-up, IVR (interactive voice response) messaging and use these to promote the online service. 

From user research, I’ve seen that people are more likely to trust a phone call over using an online tool. So explain how this tool can be trusted to get things logged and fixed. Promote the services to others in the community, like the sheltered housing wardens – can they show residents how to use it or be encouraged to use it on their residents’ behalf?  

Also, consider the complete journey. If your existing online repairs service results in a phone call to agree on an appointment time, this only encourages the tenant to ring up next time. Confidence in an authority’s digital maturity is built by showing residents a complete online journey that leaves them informed of what’s happening next.

If you’re thinking of putting in place an online repair service it’s time to weigh up the pros and cons of having a login. The best way to do this is to get out and speak to the people who matter the most: those who’ll be using it.

Learn more about our login-free online housing repairs reporting software

The post Reporting housing repairs online: why no login boosts adoption appeared first on Made Tech.

I’ve had many conversations with local authorities about social care workflows. It’s widely understood that improvements can be made, but there’s understandable hesitance about where to begin. To start to streamline social care workflows, here’s my starter for 5 on the important questions that service teams should ask themselves.

1. Where are our pain points?

To work out how to get to a better place, it always helps to understand where you are, and the associated challenges. Though your team may have an intuitive grasp of all the workflows, actually mapping them out can be very useful, and reveal opportunities for improvement.

From our conversations with local authorities, it’s clear that communication with service users is a significant pain point.

As an example, this image shows a simplified version of how a social care monitoring team might conduct an audit for adult social care payments. We know that some councils may have different workflows in place, but otherwise this reflects how many councils out there operate.

It’s not unusual for a social care monitoring team to have touchpoints with the same service user by letter, email and phone calls to get the evidence needed to verify a user’s eligibility for social care. This can lead to no end of inefficiencies: context switching (i.e. jumping between different tasks in different apps); repeated need to chase users up by phone – a further drain on officers’ time. And all of these mean a higher transactional cost than using a digital channel.

This is just one workflow, but it’s a good example of how opportunities for improvement can be identified.

2. What can we automate?

For now, your identified pain points will often present opportunities for streamlining your processes. The best way to streamline a process is to automate it if possible. Needless to say, automation is generally only doable with digital workflows, so digitalising what isn’t already digital can be an essential prerequisite – easier said than done, we know.

Looking at your already-digital workflows, at the ideal end of the spectrum, automation would handle whole tasks in your workflow so that you can, essentially, forget about them in your day-to-day work.

For example, that could mean tooling that confirms the receipt of documents, or sends out reminders to service users when there’s an outstanding action they haven’t addressed within a particular time frame.

And ideally, this functionality will be embedded in your case management system. This could save significant time, not only the raw time spent on the tasks, but on the time sunk into context switching.

As an aside, the impact of context switching is often underestimated – or even ignored. In 2021, research by Qatalog and Cornell University (PDF) found that in a typical workplace:

• people spend an average of 36 minutes per day context switching
• it takes an average of 9 and a half minutes to settle back into a productive workflow after switching context
• 43% of people report that context switching is “very tiring” 😩

Another example is ID verification – an onerous task that can be largely automated with the right tools to hand.

But you can also look for smaller opportunities to automate processes with the tools you’re already using. Which apps do you spend most of your time using, or – perhaps more importantly – prefer to use?

For example, if receiving emails is essential to your workflow, but you spend a lot of your working day in a communications app like Microsoft Teams, you may be able to save valuable time by routing certain emails into a Teams channel, negating some avoidable context switching.

3. What can we standardise?

After looking at what you can automate, you can also look at what you can standardise. A great example here already used by many teams are message templates you can use as a basis for your main communications with service users. But how many teams keep a folder of standard documents as a basis for their messages? It can be tempting – for ease – just to copy and paste from a recent, similar message, which carries serious risk if personal information isn’t replaced.

Ideally, your message templates should be baked into the software you use to communicate with your users. They shouldn’t be more than a few clicks away from your workflow, and ideally provide clear prompts for the information you need to populate. And they should also be easy to maintain and update when needed. Select, populate, review and send – and with the certainty that what you’re sending is correct.

A good message template solution not only saves you time, it also helps you maintain quality. You should regularly audit your templates to make sure they’re up to date, and being used by your team. If they’re not properly maintained or easy to use, your team will find workarounds, and that’s where both inefficiencies and errors can creep in – and proliferate.

Templates are the stand-out example for us, but take a good look at all your workflows. There may be other opportunities.

4. How can we reduce risk?

From our conversations with local authorities, one thing we hear time and again is that data privacy, security and compliance are a major concern.

We’re all aware of cases in local government where the unthinkable has happened. The reality is, no organisation can be 100% guaranteed to be safe from data breaches, but there are things you can do to mitigate risk. 

This is too thorny an issue to address in detail here. The requirements of the Data Protection Act 2018 alone are extremely extensive.

Chances are, you’re already on top of, and compliant with, all the necessary regulations. But there may still be the opportunity for efficiency. The relative benefits of on-premises data storage versus cloud-based storage have been endlessly debated over the years, but without doubt the weight of opinion has shifted in favour of cloud, where leading hosting providers like AWS offer robust data security and privacy tools that, if correctly employed, simplify this complex requirement.. 

None of this means you’re no longer responsible for data, and there are numerous questions you should pose to potential providers. But using the right cloud-hosted solutions can mean you can offload some of the day-to-day hassle of making sure your workflows stay compliant, saving significant time and worry. However, cloud technology expertise is needed to get up and running.

5. How can we make life better for our users?

We’ve saved this for last, but we know that for all local authorities, making life better for users – making things simpler and faster for them – is top priority. 

When it comes to reducing the overall duration between the user’s first point of contact to a resolution of their case, much of the advice above should help. Anything that helps you to get things done more quickly has a knock-on benefit to your users. Win-win.

But perhaps more importantly, there are considerations for how service users experience their interactions with your organisation in the moment. Receiving paper correspondence can be a weighty mental burden. Receiving phone calls isn’t always convenient, and for some people an unwelcome intrusion. And in sum, these interactions can create the impression of disjointed customer service.

If you have a digital service that provides a better experience than other channels, take every opportunity to promote it. State the URL in every letter and every phone recorded message and script. Along with that, state the benefit of using the digital service – “it takes an average of x minutes by phone, but y minutes online”, for example.

Though, there are almost always opportunities to improve the digital offering you provide, escaping limiting or outdated legacy technology will become essential – if it isn’t already.

Solving one problem at a time vs. all at once

Small, incremental improvements based on current tooling are almost certainly possible, but ultimately, a modern holistic technological answer to these concerns is the best approach. Over time, it will certainly save significant time and expense. We know these are commodities in short supply, and which local authorities can put to better use.

We’ve been working hard on ways to streamline social care, and we’re keen to show it to local authorities at our showcase: Introducing Made Tech Evidence: social care direct payment monitoring. Sign up to watch.

The post Streamlining social care processes: 5 questions you should be asking appeared first on Made Tech.

Evidence does away with all that 

Evidence lets your end users share their evidence and other information with a simple online service. It’s available 24/7 and is built with all kinds of devices in mind, so users can share their information anywhere, anytime. 

And with reliable ID verification built in, you can leave risky manual checks behind and trust that your users are who they claim to be.

No more follow-up calls to fill in the blanks. It’s designed to save your organisation the time and money spent on all that admin so you can put it to better use. 

With a faster, easier way to share information, customer satisfaction improves as well.

Peace of mind for you and your service users

It isn’t just about simplifying paperwork. It’s about peace of mind.

Peace of mind that your users will know what to do and share the right information in due time, thanks to easy-to-follow instructions and helpful notifications and well-timed reminders to take action.

Peace of mind that the personal data shared by your users is in good hands. With robust end-to-end security, consent management, and fully-audited user access, Evidence keeps your users’ information and documents safe at all times.

And because Evidence is a true Software as a Service (SaaS) product, you can be assured that you’ll always benefit from the latest improvement and free and responsive customer support without hidden costs or complicated fee structures.

Many possible applications

We know Evidence can be a game changer in many council services, like:

• social care direct payment monitoring
• social care financial assessments
• housing applications
• new employee spot checks
• taxi licence renewals

​​But there are likely lots more applications that we haven’t spotted yet! 

We’d love to hear your ideas about where and how our product could make a difference. Evidence is only starting its journey. Now’s a great time for you to get involved and help us shape the product to make sure it’s as helpful as possible for your services!

Book a demo today

Do you want to learn more about the potential benefits of Evidence for your organisation? We’d love to give you a personal tour of the product and hear about your needs in a short informal online chat. 

Book your demo today – get in touch via our product page. 

The post Streamline and secure access to your services with Made Tech Evidence appeared first on Made Tech.