Case Study: South Lakes Housing Achieved 96% Call Handling With Netcall

The Challenge

South Lakes Housing, an independent, not-for-profit housing association, is the largest provider of affordable rented and social housing in in the picturesque region of South Lakeland, Cumbria.

Their team of around 130 manages around 3,600 properties with a variety of tenures, including leasehold, shared ownership, social housing and independent living schemes.

South Lakes Housing was looking for a bespoke solution to bring together all its existing systems and if they could deliver a bespoke, tailored solution that brought South Lakes Housing’s systems together to maximise digital automation. Working on various systems meant lack of visibility of performance, call data and reporting.

Their small team of five advisors and one team leader, handle all customer interactions, often dealing with high call volumes and long wait times, averaging about 4 minutes.

This caused repeat inquiries and reduced first-time resolutions, and for the team, increased manual work. Operational efficiency and real-time visibility were crucial.

South Lakes Housing deployed Liberty Converse, our omnichannel cloud contact centre solution, to centralise customer service operations and enable the team to successfully handle all interactions – calls, texts, emails and social media messages – through one unified interface.

Paul Aitken, Systems and Change Lead, South Lakes Housing, said, “Liberty Converse has nailed-down the functionality that our housing association needed.

We have achieved our primary goal of improving first-time resolution rates and a joined-up service. It’s a small team, but with the right technology, we have seen that it’s possible to deliver a very efficient, customer-focused service.”

Solution

In March, before deploying Liberty Converse, South Lakes had a call answer rate of 84.5% with 2,822 calls received. By August, using Converse, the call answer rate had improved to 93%, nearly a 10% improvement.

In the 8 months after deployment, the team took 18,745 calls and handled 96% with a low abandon rate of 4%. They have seen a reduction in wait time dropping from 4 minutes to 1 minute and can see improvements in performance, which they can now drill down to each call handler.

Call volumes had reduced to 2,310, a reduction of 18%. This was due to fewer follow-up calls, reflecting the improvements in first-time resolution. With improved visibility into caller history, customers no longer needed to chase up on unresolved issues.

In the past, advisers had to switch between different platforms to manage customer interactions. This siloed approach was causing inefficiencies and lengthening call times. In Converse, advisors can manage customer queries seamlessly from one dashboard.

Converse’s CRM integration has enabled advisors to access complete customer histories, helping them resolve issues during the first call.

The ability to transfer calls between agents smoothly and efficiently, thanks to a seamless integration with MS Teams, has further contributed to higher resolution rates.

Leanne Addison, Customer Hub Team Leader, said, “Netcall is so user-friendly! Our team find it much easier to manage the call queue which has led to a reduction in wait times. We also have better visibility of what others in the team are doing which means we can communicate more effectively with each other.

We have utilised dashboards so we can make sure we keep on track of our KPIs – something we haven’t been able to do before. We have also added a survey to the end of our calls, meaning we can identify great customer service or put things right instantly.”

There are plans to expand the system’s use across all service areas to gain a complete view of customer interactions and performance.

Using Converse’s voice and screen recordings, South Lakes were able to access omnichannel transcripts, showing the context of each interaction, to evaluate interactions.

They introduced a system to track and review 10% of calls each week for quality control. They were able to use this to identify areas for improvement and reinforce positive actions, enabling training to continue to drive the team’s performance.

Using Converse’s customer satisfaction surveys at the end of each interaction, South Lakes gathered valuable feedback that helped to refine staff training and service delivery. Their 5-point scale for customer satisfaction ratings increased to 4.3 out of 5 (where 5 is ‘excellent’).

Using Converse, Advisers can see live dashboards showing how their team is performing. This visibility enables them to better support each other during busy periods.

With a unified view of all incoming communications, advisors can prioritise tasks effectively and switch between communication channels based on demand.

Converse allows South Lakes Housing to capture customer feedback at the end of each call, focusing on key indicators like whether the adviser explained next steps or asked the right questions. This ongoing feedback loop has allowed for continuous improvements in service delivery for the social housing provider.

We have been able to implement call quality assurance check based on Let’s Make it Happen framework embedding culture and behaviour principles – using Converse, the team leader can identify where an adviser has delivered this and where there are training needs.

Delivering insights into call volumes, wait times and first-time resolution rates has allowed South Lakes Housing to identify areas for improvement. Gathering more comprehensive data has enabled better tracking against KPIs.

Converse has enabled them to share data on call volumes, wait times and customer satisfaction, which has helped to build transparency and drive decision making for further improvements.

A standout benefit for South Lakes Housing was the ability to extract detailed performance metrics which are used to report to the board of management as well as resident forums.

Result

Reduced call volumes saw an 18% reduction, reflecting an improvement in efficient call handling, with 96% of calls being answered.

Call wait time also significantly improved, dropping from 4 minutes to just 1 minute, resulting in a quicker and more efficient customer experience. Customer satisfaction saw a boost with transactional surveys showing a score of 4.3 out of 5.

Internal collaboration was enhanced through the integration of Microsoft Teams with Converse, allowing the team to check colleague availability in real-time. This development improved call transfers and internal communications, leading to a more connected and efficient team.

Task prioritisation was improved as advisors gained access to dashboards to assess team performance and adjust tasks accordingly. This led to faster response times and a more organised approach to managing workload.

Call recording and quality assurance processes helped identify areas for improvement, enabling targeted training to drive better team performance and service quality.

Adviser experience and efficiency were enhanced with live dashboards, task prioritisation, and visibility of colleague availability. Additionally, training based on call recordings helped improve skills and overall team productivity.

Finally, better management insight was achieved through these improvements, driving more effective decision-making and ensuring that the team could respond dynamically to challenges.

The Future

South Lakes Housing continues to refine its use of Liberty Converse, with goals to further improve the customer experience, particularly around the repairs service.

A significant initiative in the coming year is the Repairs Customer Experience Project, where the team will use call recording data to tell the real story of customer journeys better, using Liberty Converse to feed real-time data into the improvement plans.

This social housing provider now delivers a more efficient, customer-focused service with the same small team.

On their continuing journey, they will continue to refine internal processes, leveraging real-time data and exploring new functionality, such as Converse’s Video Assistant, to easily report repairs and faults. Each development enhances their efforts to meet compliance requirements and customer needs.

This blog post has been re-published by kind permission of Netcall – View the Original Article

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Author: Netcall
Reviewed by: Jo Robinson