West Kent Housing Association has been working with Sovereign Business Integration to develop and deliver an ‘It’s Your Call’ customer access strategy as well as developing a three-year ICT plan.
Deborah White, housing and communities director, West Kent Housing Association, said, “Opening up alternative communication channels with our customers is important – although around 80 per cent of our residents currently prefer to communicate over the phone, we wanted to make sure we could respond to the changing needs of new tenants who may be younger or more ‘tech-savvy’ and prefer to communicate via text and the internet.”
It was also imperative to West Kent to streamline its existing ICT processes for a greater degree of organisation and a more consistent service. Sovereign will therefore also manage the specification and selection of new ICT systems to enable alternative channels of communication between staff and customers as part of West Kent’s ‘right person; right answer; first time’ initiative.
White said, “One of the drivers for our new ICT strategy was that we had a number of disparate ICT systems which didn’t necessarily talk to each other. This meant information was not easily available to those who needed it, making it difficult to build a true picture of residents and provide consistent and up-to-date information.”
Sovereign played an advisory role in the delivery of the customer access strategy, ensuring that the right ICT tools and methods are used to open up alternative customer communication channels to make their customer access programme a success.
