14 June, 2023
Bromford Living
Bromford Living achieve 80% first-time-fix call resolution using Keyfax
Bromford Living is a registered social housing landlord covering 63 local authorities in Central and South West England, with housing stock comprising 27,000 properties. They employ over 1,000 staff, providing housing and asset management, an in-house repairs team and a development team responsible for building new homes.
The Challenge
Bromford Living’s managers believed the group was underperforming in its objectives to consistently deliver a high-quality service to its customers, but had aspirations to improve.
A key issue was that there were five separate contact centres providing customer services for housing policies, tenancy agreements and repairs, each with different contact numbers. Bromford Living knew they needed to explore new technology to resolve this.
The Solution
During their research, Bromford Living discovered Keyfax, resident repair diagnostics and query management solutions software from Omfax, a leading information solutions provider for the social housing sector.
Mandy Holian, Customer Service Contact Manager, explained: “Keyfax ticked all the boxes for us. One of the biggest attractions was that it would integrate seamlessly with our existing housing management system, MIS Active-H.”
Bromford Living also took the decision to merge the contact centres and create one virtual hub, split across two locations but, with one phone number. Omfax worked with Bromford to develop and customise the processes, policies and procedures, for rolling out to the housing and repairs side of the organisation. This guidance equipped the front-line team with the knowledge to handle a vast array of housing queries, from rent and anti-social behaviour, to repairs and maintenance. One of the key objectives was to set and achieve a target of 80% first-time call resolution and allow a consistent service to be delivered, regardless of which of the 27,000 customers called, or which of the 35 Customer Service Advisors answered the call.
The Results
Bromford Living has experienced a significant reduction in average call time for repairs reporting, from 3.5 minutes down to 2.8 minutes, representing a time saving of 18% measured over a four- week period.
The organisation has continued to improve and evolve in many areas and is now largely unrecognisable to the operation prior to using Keyfax. Part of the transformation has been thanks to the benefits being delivered by Keyfax on a daily basis, through the integration with the MIS ActiveH housing management system. Keyfax provides the team with the tools to make them more effective in delivering the desired customer service. It has been instrumental in allowing the organisation to achieve the target of 80% first-time-fix call resolution. This, in turn, frees up the specialist team to concentrate on other areas that can add value.
Mandy Holian commented, “Keyfax has made life easier in terms of running the department. There is no longer such a steep learning curve, as colleagues rely on the information being available in Keyfax. For example, when we need to update customers with an announcement, such as our annual rent review, we can update scripts quickly and easily for the required period when we send the letters out. Subsequently, the front-line Advisors have the guidance to hand when a call comes in.”
What our client said about Omfax
“We wanted a system that meant we would not be reliant on the software provider to make any changes. Keyfax was perfect, as it allowed us the flexibility to make any amendments ourselves and enable us to better react to the business needs.”
Mandy Holian, Customer Service Contact Manager
