Wiltshire Council improves services with 360 Customer Portal
One of the greatest challenges facing local authorities in the current climate is the need to deliver the same services to residents while being unable to offer the same level of personal interaction.
Restrictions on face-to-face contact have meant that housing officers can only visit those in the greatest need, while council call centres are fielding unprecedented call volumes.
At the same time, councils are being expected to provide a higher level of service for their customers, maintain and improve housing standards and faster response times, while budgets have been repeatedly reduced in all areas.
Housing providers must find ways to focus their limited resources on the activities and customers that need the most attention, while still improving service levels for all customers. For this reason, councils are turning to self-service portals, making it possible for tenants to help themselves.
Challenge: Managing more customer enquiries
Calls to customer contact centres have skyrocketed during the pandemic, since customers can no longer make simple enquiries during a home visit or make enquiries at the council offices. Having identified that a large proportion of customer calls related to simple account enquiries such as rent statements and updating customer data, Wiltshire Council realised that they needed to encourage customers that are able, to serve themselves by using a customer portal, as this would reduce the volume of calls and prioritise customers in the greatest need.
With over 5,000 properties under their management, Wiltshire Council have been using the Aareon QL Housing Management Software for many years and realised that a new customer portal would need to integrate closely with this system. Knowing that similar housing providers such as Curo were also using the system gave them confidence that it would also meet the needs and expectations of Wiltshire’s customers.