Intelligent housing repair software made simple.

Introduction

Orbit Group is one of the largest builders of affordable homes in England, providing services to over 100,000 customers.

Established in 1967, they now have around 45,000 homes in the midlands, east and south east of England. As well as this, they plan to build around 1,500 new affordable homes every year.

As a responsible business, Orbit Group places customers and communities at the heart of what they do. This is achieved through playing an active role in neighbourhoods, as well as supporting local economies and social activities with the community.

The challenge

Delivering excellent customer experience is a key objective of Orbit’s 2025 Corporate Strategy. This includes making it easier for customers to contact Orbit, whilst transforming their digital offer to provide greater customer choice.

For a number of years, Orbit customers have been able to access personal information and services via their myAccount portal, such as viewing rent balances, transaction history, making a payment and setting up a Direct Debit.

As part of their Corporate Strategy, Orbit set out to improve their myAccount portal by offering customers the ability to book a repair online and access help and support on a range of housing related topics.

Statistics show that these two service areas alone equate to around two thirds of all customer telephone contact.

The solution

As an existing Omfax customer, Orbit has been using its Keyfax software for staff within its Contact Centre to log repairs and process customer enquiries.

In August 2020, Orbit contacted Omfax to discuss their vision of improving their online services.

One of the benefits of being an existing Keyfax customer is that Omfax could provide a fully “out of the box” integrated online solution at a very competitive price.

Following a discovery call and demo of Keyfax Online, Orbit agreed to implement the Keyfax repairs online  and enquiries online modules.

Work began in November 2020. A start-up meeting set the scene to confirm the scope of the project, capture requirements and go through the implementation process. As part of this, it was agreed that Orbit would use the Omfax Diagnostics Script Development service to help build their enquiry module content.

Throughout the duration of the project, Paul Ancill was on hand to provide project management and technical support.

As well as the project work, Omfax also delivered Keyfax Admin training on how to use and get the most out of Keyfax. Over the course of two sessions, attendees learned the foundations of diagnostic maintenance. In the second session, they learnt how intelligent scripting could be applied to improve the customer experience.

Benefits

By using Keyfax Repairs Online, Orbit was able to implement a fully responsive repairs service within the space of a few short months. Using their existing knowledge of Keyfax and the foundation of their repairs staff, Orbit built their online content easily and quickly.

Keyfax Enquiries Online has given Orbit customers access to a range of help and support. In addition, customers can request information from advisory teams, covering topics such as:

• anti-social behaviour;
• permissions;
• refund requests; and
• tenancy changes.

Using intelligent diagnostics, Keyfax ensures that Orbit customers are shown the correct information at the right time, based on their tenancy type.

“Improving the customer experience is integral to the way we develop our digital channels and working alongside a partner in Omfax, who share that same customer focus, was definitely a key to the success on this project. We wanted to offer more options to our customers in a way that was quick, clear and easy; and the Keyfax solution allowed us to do that”

Julie Kay, Head of Digital Operations, was delighted with the outcome:

“Our existing portal had limited functionality and we wanted to improve the self-service offering to our customers. One of which was to ability to book a repair in an easier and quicker way. By partnering with Omfax and sharing best practices, we have been able to improve our customer experience. It has been a pleasure working on this project with Omfax, and taking real feedback from our customers and turning that into a live product. The new Keyfax repair module is not only user friendly but also has a great look and feel.”

Ricky Shokar, Project Manager for Orbit, said the project was a great success: