A merger can be an opportunity to improve customer service

Scale matters: it allows you to leverage resources, invest more in frontline services, use technology and data better to drive improvements, and harness the skills and specialisms a larger workforce brings.

The integration of our contact centre in our south-east region provides clear evidence of this. Our increased investment quickly boosted performance, with call answer rates jumping from 72.14% at the beginning of our partnership, to 92.23% today, with average wait times declining by 50%.

“As well as investing in the skills of our customer contact centre team members, we need to support them with the right technology”

This has allowed us to increase the number of customer queries resolved at first point of contact significantly, creating capacity elsewhere to resolve complex enquiries. By investing in training and empowering our colleagues to resolve more issues, as well as making regional improvements, customer satisfaction with our contact centre in the South East rose from 60% before the partnership, to 92.93%.

It’s a powerful reminder that the right support, delivered with confidence and care, makes all the difference to our customers.

As well as investing in the skills of our customer contact centre team members, we need to support them with the right technology. My Abri, our customer portal, gives our customers true self-service to manage their tenancy, freeing up our phone lines for those who really need to speak to us. Over 30,000 customers are registered and use the portal, which has given us the capacity to improve our services.

We’ve also implemented 8x8, a contact centre solution that helps us use data more effectively and provides customer sentiment analysis. It links seamlessly with our CRM system and gives us a valuable insight into the drivers of customer dissatisfaction so we can work proactively to resolve issues before they escalate.

Investing heavily in training and engagement has been crucial, but we also needed to instil a consistent and cohesive culture of success to ensure our contact centres are engaged and motivated. Our annual customer contact centre away days continue to provide a great space for our teams to connect with their colleagues across our regions, giving them time to collaborate, share ideas and hear from our senior leaders directly.

With our contact centres established as leaders of great customer service at Abri, we embedded shadowing them as a mandatory part of the onboarding process for all new starters.

“With our contact centres established as leaders of great customer service at Abri, we embedded shadowing them as a mandatory part of the onboarding process for all new starters”

Alongside this, we have held annual contact centre open days across all our sites since 2023. This is where colleagues from across the organisation, including executive directors and other senior leaders, are invited to shadow our contact centre team and experience interactions with our customers first-hand.

These provide a key reminder across Abri of how important the contact centre is in delivering a great experience for our customers. Leaders gain valuable insight into the role the team plays, and team members connect colleagues who don’t interact with customers often with our core purpose – to create thriving communities and empower lives.

The successful integration of Silva’s customer contact service has shown us what’s possible when we ensure that structure, strategy and culture all align. As we continue integrating Octavia into the Abri group, we’re using the lessons we’ve learned from Silva as a blueprint for maintaining and improving services while undergoing a period of change.

In an era when housing providers are under more pressure than ever to deliver quality service at scale, it’s clear that customer contact centres play a critical part in this and should not be seen as a back-office function. When done right, being a larger organisation can enable a better service to customers, without compromising on the insight, community connections and relationships of local organisations.

Tom Ramadan, associate director of customer contact, Abri