Case Study - NEC Housing
How Wolverhampton Homes is transforming customer contact and access
One year after launching its new customer app, Wolverhampton Homes is delivering access to services in a more personalised way to support customers at a time and in a way that suits them.
Resident empowerment
Wolverhampton Homes uses NEC Housing as its Housing Management Software. Its team collaborate at every opportunity to develop new tools to enhance customer contact and access, and one of its recent ambitions was to empower people to manage their own homes. They were looking for an easy-to-use app that would let customers check their rent balance, apply for a property, book a repair or get quick answers to queries. At the same time, we were developing a solution that would not only make these transactions as seamless as possible but also strengthen the relationship between landlords and their customers. Working alongside Wolverhampton Homes as our beta partner, we created NEC Engage.
Smooth digital experience
Unlike online portals that just deal with transactions, NEC Engage learns what matters to each customer then promotes greater involvement in how housing services are run. Available online and as an app, it includes all the features you’d expect, like repairs requests, and it also fosters collaboration. Customers can join in personalised discussion groups to support areas such as responding to consultations, voting on investment decisions and register to attend meetings or collaborate on documentation.
To get ready to go live, Wolverhampton Homes first completed a market segmentation exercise to check technical proficiency among its customers. We also worked with user experience experts from the NEC Design Studio, creating user journeys that were shared for feedback and iteration.
Crucially, Wolverhampton Homes engaged with its Customer Involvement Panel as part of the development cycle, asking them to test modules and gather their feedback to ensure the modules met the needs of customers.
Wolverhampton Homes launched its app, called “My Account”, in November 2023 and it’s since been downloaded to more than 23,500 devices (both smart and iOS).
Great results, with more to come
The customer service improvements are clear from the statistics. By offering a personalised digital experience, there are now 2,000 fewer calls per month, 200 fewer form submissions, more than 50% fewer emails and almost 90% fewer social media messages. Since August 2024, the extension of the app to the Housing Options service has also seen around a 30% decrease in the average number of housing applications, as users are now able to make basic eligibility checks at a much earlier stage.
As a result, the team now has more capacity to provide better services to everyone.
Ongoing engagement is driving the app’s evolution, too. Following a customer’s suggestion, users can now report fly tipping on the app. Looking ahead, Wolverhampton Homes will also be extending the app to include our new Repairs Diagnostics solution, which makes it easier to deliver a first-time fix by guiding customers to report faults accurately.
