Robotisation for housing associations

RPA and AI for housing associations: better service delivery and more efficient work

Robotisation for housing associations

From the first point of contact with a potential tenant to the handing over of the keys, as well as thereafter, housing associations have many contact moments. Every contact moment is a valuable opportunity to help your tenants personally and properly, and to improve the quality of your services. Can you use both opportunities at the same time? Yes, by using software robots in customer contact and the underlying processes. You then also have the added benefits of saving time, improving process control, and - not least - happy employees.

More and more housing associations are enabling humans and robots to work together to take their services to the next level. Would you like to know how your association can improve in relation to common routine tasks, manual work, and cumbersome processes with Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Artificial Intelligence (AI)? Then read more below.

Here is a quick guide to the topics covered:

What is RPA?

What is AI?

Advantages of RPA and AI for housing associations

The results of RPA and AI in housing associations

I want custom advice

What is RPA?

RPA stands for Robotic Process Automation. A robot? Yes. Not with human characteristics, but a computer robot: a piece of software that takes routine tasks out of employees' hands quickly, continuously, and without errors. With RPA, for example, you instantly have access to all tenant data from different systems in one overview.

Or you can handle your maintenance repairs, from notification to execution and invoicing, automatically. This way, employees do not lose valuable time on research or recurring administration and can spend much more time on targeted and personal contact with customers and their real questions. Find out more about RPA here.

What is Artificial Intelligence and how can it be implemented? 

What is AI?

AI stands for artificial intelligence. It is a smart technology that involves computers applying human intelligence to perform tasks independently. An AI robot is self-learning and therefore gets progressively better at its tasks. Examples of such tasks include answering frequently asked questions quickly and properly (possibly via a chatbot) and handling your email traffic adequately and automatically. If you combine the intelligence of AI with RPA, you have an enormously powerful tool on your hands to improve your corporate processes in a groundbreaking way.


An appropriate response 24/7

You can apply AI to handling mail traffic, for example, using AI Mail Automation. Tenants mail the corporation at any time of the day or night. That's not so unusual. What is unusual is that their question is immediately answered automatically or is registered as a report and actioned the moment they submit it. This is what happens when you automate mail traffic using AI. As a result, the tenant is helped immediately or the question is placed on an employee's to-do list right away if the AI bot cannot figure it out on its own.

AI knowledge base for FAQs and search queries

Tenants approach the housing association with all kinds of questions - via the website, email, and social media - in search of the right answer. You can easily digitise this process. In a knowledge base, you collect examples of questions and their answers. The AI software is then trained to recognise an increasing number of topics and questions to build a reliable knowledge base. One source, one truth. The tenant is helped immediately, possibly by a chatbot or via email. Additionally, the same knowledge base is also extremely useful for customer contact centre (CCC) employees.

Advantages of RPA and AI for housing associations

Better reachability and communication

Housing associations are heavy users where email traffic, phone calls, and, increasingly, messages via WhatsApp and social channels (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn) are concerned. Processing all this communication takes time, because you want to help tenants properly. And you want to do this both from the office and when employees are working from home. This often means longer waiting times, worse accessibility, even more communication, and often a higher workload. You can solve these issues by streamlining your processes to meet today's requirements using smart technology like RPA, AI, and VoIP.

Intelligent, automatic mail processing

Customer contact employees at housing associations devote a lot of time and attention to mail traffic. Whether it comes in via the contact form on the website, via the portal, or directly via email, most communication deals with common questions and standard processes. Assessing and routing queries is done manually, as is recording queries in an ERP or customer tracking system.

Applying AI Mail Automation in combination with RPA can drastically reduce the amount of routine work. Once the AI software knows what the query is about and possibly supplements it with data from other systems, we deploy smart templates that handle the query fully automatically. Is the query not quite so standard? Then the software will recognise this and forward it to the right employee.

Accessible everywhere and at all times on every channel

VoIP telephony gives your housing association the kind of accessibility you can build on. Your switchboard is in the cloud, so you need fewer fixed phones in the office. In addition, you can use your mobile phone to log in from any location and to make calls via the switchboard, with the same functions as in the office. A big advantage - especially when working from home - is that employees can call using their fixed business numbers, even when using their private mobile phones. The platform can be expanded to an omnichannel contact centre for voice, email, chat, WhatsApp, and social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter on a single platform.

Spend less time looking up and processing data

Housing associations prefer to spend their time and energy on providing first-class services. After all, your tenants' satisfaction is important. Yet you are amazed at how much time your employees spend on manually processing data. This may include routine tasks such as looking up, checking, combining, and recording documents; and transferring data from one application to another manually or using slow, complicated interfaces. These are necessary actions, but there is also more useful work to do.


An example: easing the administrative burden in relation to social housing

Renting out social housing involves a lot of administration, which employees often process manually. This may include handling documents such as an income statement, proof of identity, an extract from the Personal Records Database, a landlord's statement, and often more. With RPA and AI, you handle this document flow largely automatically, whether you are dealing with digital documents or enclosed originals or copies. The software recognises and processes all relevant information, after which employees only need to perform a check. This way, you make an important but time-consuming process faster, more accurate, and, above all, more pleasant for employees.

Better reachability and communication

Housing associations are heavy users where email traffic, phone calls, and, increasingly, messages via WhatsApp and social channels (e.g. Facebook, LinkedIn) are concerned. Processing all this communication takes time, because you want to help tenants properly. And you want to do this both from the office and when employees are working from home. This often means longer waiting times, worse accessibility, even more communication, and often a higher workload. You can solve these issues by streamlining your processes to meet today's requirements using smart technology like RPA, AI, and VoIP.

Intelligent, automatic mail processing

Customer contact employees at housing associations devote a lot of time and attention to mail traffic. Whether it comes in via the contact form on the website, via the portal, or directly via email, most communication deals with common questions and standard processes. Assessing and routing queries is done manually, as is recording queries in an ERP or customer tracking system.

Applying AI Mail Automation in combination with RPA can drastically reduce the amount of routine work. Once the AI software knows what the query is about and possibly supplements it with data from other systems, we deploy smart templates that handle the query fully automatically. Is the query not quite so standard? Then the software will recognise this and forward it to the right employee.

Accessible everywhere and at all times on every channel

VoIP telephony gives your housing association the kind of accessibility you can build on. Your switchboard is in the cloud, so you need fewer fixed phones in the office. In addition, you can use your mobile phone to log in from any location and to make calls via the switchboard, with the same functions as in the office. A big advantage - especially when working from home - is that employees can call using their fixed business numbers, even when using their private mobile phones. The platform can be expanded to an omnichannel contact centre for voice, email, chat, WhatsApp, and social platforms such as Facebook and Twitter on a single platform.

The results

RPA and AI for housing associations is not rocket science, but it is a smart way to digitise recurring, common tasks. Think of it as a virtual colleague, available 24/7 to assist employees quickly and faultlessly.

With robotisation, you don't take the human out of the organisation, as many people think, but rather you take the robot out of the human. And that comes with many advantages:

  • Tenants who are assisted quickly and properly, 24/7, whether digitally or personally.
  • Better service delivery that is based on smart, error-free actions and processes.
  • Happy, motivated employees who do more meaningful work without routine tasks, also when they are working form home.

I want robotisation for my housing association!

You can apply robotisation in many processes. Since each housing association works in its own way, each solution is tailor-made.

Could robotisation benefit your association? What savings or quality improvements can be achieved in your processes? How can you offer your tenants even better service and meet or exceed their expectations?

Request an introductory meeting with one of our specialists and discuss whether and how RPA and AI can make a difference within your association.

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