How we helped a leading North London Housing Association to 80% customer take up of secure e-statements and saved them £1,000’s in the process – a case study

The Client

Our client is a Housing Association managing over 8,000 properties in North and East London. The executive committee are driving a strategy to modernise their approach to customer service, implementing streamlined reliable systems that are capable of absorbing future growth and increasing resident satisfaction.

Business Requirements

Effective, low cost communication to residents is a key strategic requirement to the Association and with a database containing over 50% of resident email addresses a secure electronic document delivery system was a top priority. Given the sensitive nature of the content of tenant communication the selected supplier of the service would need to demonstrate a clear understanding of the data protection regulations and act as a safe haven for the Association’s data.

Simplicity of use was a fundamental requirement and with the facility to allow a level of self service by tenants when using the service.

The GPS Solution

GPS already provided a print and mail service to the client for the production of rent statements, rent review letters, section 20 letters and other critical mailings and were able to propose a solution that linked seamlessly into the Associations existing workflows.

As a leading provider to over 70 Housing Associations GPS had pro-actively developed a bespoke solution for e-document delivery with the housing sector in mind.

The Clarity Document Archive provides a secure repository to store the Associations documents and works with a simple interface to allow tenants to quickly access and view their correspondence.

GPS take data from the association and process this through our document composition software to create unique personalised pdfs of the mailing. These can then be printed if a paper copy is required, or uploaded straight to the Archive. This ensures uniformity between printed and electronic documents. Once documents have been uploaded an email or text alert is sent to the tenant to advise them that their documents are now available for viewing.

Sophisticated email monitoring software allows GPS to monitor and report on undeliverable mail and also identify dormant accounts where mail is not being opened. Undeliverable email addresses are reprocessed and a hard copy letter will be sent to the tenant’s address along with a personalised message requesting their current email address. Business rules can also be built in to trigger a hard copy mailing if an email remains unread after an agreed set period.

Client Benefits

The primary benefit of the Clarity Archive is that it has been designed for multiple installations within the Housing sector and therefore the cost of implementation for a new client is relatively low. The association is buying into a tried and tested service rather than paying for bespoke development.

The branding of the site is fully customisable to the client, so tenants will be re-assured that they are dealing with the Association and not a third party.

Letters are stored by tenancy reference so a tenant can still view historic documents even if they move house.

GPS work with the Association to grow uptake of the e-delivery service, using white space messaging to reinforce the benefits of moving away from print and mail.

Cost savings since the client switched to the service have been significant with an overall saving of 80% compared to the traditional print and mail costs of sending out statements.

All data is stored on a secure server on site at the GPS manufacturing facility. The site is accredited to ISO27001 Information Security Standard and operates to the highest standards of data protection.

The site is set up to allow tenants to manage their own accounts and includes the facility to reset passwords without contacting the Association direct, reducing contact centre calls.