Social Housing - Managing the daily relationship with tenants

Hugo Gervais -


Public housing offices are mandated by local authorities to implement social housing policies.As a result, they are in continuous contact with tenants and must ensure that they respond to the issues of the residents for which they are responsible.

As there may be many requests, efficient processes must be put in place to collect and process tenant requests effectively.The objective is to guarantee the improvement of the satisfaction and quality of life of the tenants.

We will see in this article how to improve the quality of interventions and the relationship between tenants and social housing.

Managing tenant requests

In the operation of the social housing company, local managers are in charge of a sector and the requests of the tenants.In order to collect tenants' requests, many social landlords have set up telephone switchboards that centralise all requests. However, these switchboards are quickly overloaded, requiring waiting times of several tens of minutes or even being completely saturated, adding to the frustration of the tenants.

There are numerous transmission losses with this mode of operation: poor transfer of information with a service provider, a tenant's follow-up without being able to identify the request, and a change of contact person who does not understand the entire history. All these pitfalls can be a source of dissatisfaction.

In order to avoid these problems and the negative repercussions (complaints from tenants, emails and letters to the town hall, etc.), collaborative tools can be used to collect:

  • the requests of tenants;
  • the transmission of information;
  • the synchronisation of all the people concerned by a request or complaint.

Collaborative softwares such as Urbest can be set up to facilitate exchanges between all parties involved.

  • The tenant can make a request on the app directly from their phone or computer.
    The request arrives directly in the manager’s dashboard in charge of the corresponding sector.
  • He/she can consult the request and decide to assign it to the corresponding service provider and can even set a due date according to the emergency of the need.
  • The tenant also receives changes to his request in real time and has a better understanding of what is happening.
  • The service provider receives the request directly by automated email explaining that the task has been assigned by the sector manager.
  • The service provider can, if necessary, request more information from the tenant (pdf, photos, videos, etc.) in order to be as efficient as possible during the process of an intervention.

Thanks to the calendar, the service provider can also organise an intervention date in coordination with the tenant to intervene at his place.

This collaborative operation allows all parties involved to efficiently monitor the treatment of a request, to improve the responsiveness of the social housing company, and ultimately to increase tenant satisfaction.

Scheduling interventions

Another important point for sector managers is the periodic checks and the maintenance operations that follow them.Paper calendars and diaries are still widely used today. Unfortunately, they have their limitations and some information can be lost, especially with the increasingly frequent change of employees.

All these regular tasks can be planned via the Urbest app, allowing sector managers to remember everything: site visits, regulatory visits, tenant meetings, service provider interventions, etc.Via a task planning tab, users of the tool can plan all kinds of periodic interventions and determine their recurrence over time.

When the day comes, the service providers will get notified (by mail, or push notification) and will receive the scheduled task instantly in their dashboard.

Checklists

In each sector and at regular intervals, checks of the common areas and the maintenance/tracking of the equipment must be carried out by the sector managers and the building wardens.Paper checklists have obvious disadvantages, including loss of data, the impossibility of using them on the move, processing times, etc.

The checklists natively present in the Urbest app will help you to carry out checks on your assets in just a few minutes.In the event of an anomaly, you are also able to create a request to your service providers directly from the list. This creates an action plan for you directly and without oversights!

Using Urbest mobile checklists will save you between 30 and 60 minutes per check.

Activity reports

Finally, the last important point for public housing offices is the activity reports. These reports will be useful to the social housing company for several things:

  • Renewal of public contracts

Indeed, the reports will allow the evaluation of several very important points concerning the service providers, such as the average resolution time or customer satisfaction.

This information will be useful when renewing and negotiating contracts.

  • Reports to municipalities

As the Social Housing Companies have the mandate to manage the housing policy of the local authority, they will have to report to the authority, particularly for budgetary reasons.The number of issues and interventions will be used in order to request additional budgetary envelopes.

  • Data on the processing of requests

Finally, concerning its internal functioning, the social housing company will be able to use this data for continuous improvement by:

  • Identifying the origins of incidents;
  • Analysing the recurrence of each type of request;
  • Evaluating how their numbers can be reduced.


To go further and have an analysis of your processes, you can request a free 30-minute meeting