Author: Dave Loudon, DtL Creative
We’re working with several tech companies to offer free support to the social housing sector to manage during the Covid-19 outbreak. As part of our Blue Banana innovation lab we’ve got several companies offering their technology to housing associations free of charge. For example, if you need help with managing the reduction in call centre capacity, having software that answers specific questions about COVID-19 or managing on-site activities remotely through AI when engineers have been self-isolated, then please get in contact.
Here are the two companies we’re working with:
- Fuzzlab are offering their chatbot for free to mitigate any reduction in call centre capacity and increased call volumes during the crisis. The technology acts as a virtual agent allowing tenants to self-serve in commonly asked areas. It is pre-trained with thousands of sector specific questions and answers, including important COVID-19 questions and can be customised with your specific responses.
- XMReality uses remote guidance connecting people via the smart phone and using the camera plus augmented reality to support on site activities. For example, if a gas engineer has to self-isolate, they could guide a less experienced engineer through a fault diagnosis or fix a routine issue from their armchair.
Up and down the country we’re seeing landlords scrambling about to ensure their homeworking strategies work in the event of a scale up. We’re seeing infrastructure struggling to keep up, licenses frantically being upgraded and/or increased.
There will be some who are dealing with it all perfectly well. There will be some who will be able to deal with it when it gets worse, and we are told it will. There will be demand on online portals, repairs services and well, the most basic of communications the humble phone call.
I’m not sure if housing associations really know that there are technologies out there that could mitigate the most serious effects. We work with tech companies who can and want to provide solutions to the sector. We urge you to get in touch so that we can help.
Scott Summers, co-founder of Fuzzlabs says: “We know that our technology can help to take the pressure off housing associations when the UK goes into lockdown or if employees need to self-isolate. We can have the technology up and running as quickly as possible. There’s no commitment, no strings attached and no implementation, hosting or support fees. It’s just our way of supporting the sector during this difficult time.”
If you are a housing association and need help with any of these areas, please email coronahelp@dtl-creative.co.uk. Also, if you are a tech company and want to offer help, drop us a line at coronahelp@dtl-creative.co.uk
