Having developed a customer self-service portal with Orchard Information Systems for its tenants in October 2010, South Liverpool Homes is about to extend the service via a dedicated Facebook ‘app’.
The original portal gives customers access to information and services such as rent accounts, repair requests and personal information, and integrates in real-time with SLH’s Orchard housing management system. While use of the portal by SLH’s tenants has steadily increased since its launch, SLH realised that many tenants do not use the internet in the traditional way and are more accustomed to using social networking sites as their primary web interfaces.
Orchard is about to launch an updated version of its self-service portal, offering the same levels of interactivity via a Facebook app published by SLH. Tenants will be able to register and log into the portal via this app, and link their Facebook account to it so they can quickly access SLH services without having to log in each time.
Ian Cresswell, head of ICT, South Liverpool Homes, said, “We have been using social media as a communication channel with great success and the integration of the Orchard portal with Facebook will encourage more of our customers to communicate with us in this way.”
