Plentific
Resident Self-Service Portal
At Active Housing by Plentific, we provided end-to-end resident self-service SaaS products tailored for the Social Housing sector. The aim of this service was to provide a trusted, inclusive and accessible resident experience for Social Housing Associations and their residents.
Typically, these Associations managed and maintained between 13,000 and 167,000 homes.
I was responsible for the full end-to-end online service, from the onboarding of the residents onto the Social Housing Association's platform, through to various end of tenancy processes.
During their tenancy residents could:
Make secure payments
Report (communal) repairs
View and update repair appointments
View and update tenancy information
Stay informed about community projects and events
As part of the service, we also provided access to tenancy documentation post residency.
About the product
Task
The service accommodated different resident tenure types as well as different staff members within the Social Housing Association.
Residents had access to different services depending on their tenure. This meant that they had very different experiences, depending which services they were allowed access to via the platform.
Staff members from separate departments (e.g. Call Centre staff, housing officers, repairs contractors) needed access to different real-time information regarding the resident and their home. This part of the service had to comply with GDPR regulations and we navigated various technological challenges due to legacy systems.
Action
To support the holistic service design approach, I:
Held key twice-yearly stakeholder focus groups to understand the business needs and pain points for internal staff and their residents. Collaborating with stakeholders, I mapped different service flows to identify responsibility for different functions, match functions to support from systems, and specify where data is managed.
Conducted ethnographic user interviews and observed the activities of Call Centre staff and repairs contractors.
Organised and led numerous user interviews and usability testing sessions with residents. I ensured that we were understanding the challenges experienced by individuals with different tenure types. I always ensured that sessions were inclusive, with participation reflecting a broad range of demographics and characteristics (e.g. people living with physical and learning disabilities, as well as those with minimal means of digital access). This was to enforce high accessibility standards throughout the whole service experience (both resident and staff facing).
These actions led to a deep understanding of the service experience and its pain points. I collated and presented all the findings to our internal team as well as the Housing Associations' key stakeholders. The internal team and I used a prioritisation matrix to evaluate and prioritise projects to improve the bottlenecks within the service.
Results
On average (across numerous Social Housing Associations):
Reduced time surrounding reporting repairs and managing appointments
Residents could choose an appointment date and time to suit their schedule, reducing the number of ‘no access’ episodes for contractors.
A >60% reduction on inbound repair-related calls to Call Centres enabled staff to provide a better service for other issues (e.g. Domestic Violence or Anti-Social Behaviour).
Contractors gained comprehensive information regarding reported repairs, ensuring more efficient use of their time.
More than 90% of residents found the self-service platform ‘easy to use’
Housing Associations gained greater clarity on the condition of their properties, e.g. boilers, gas safety certificates, to avoid disrepair cases in their homes.