We are here to provide quality, affordable homes, and services to our customers.   Our mission is to “Improve people’s lives” and to do that we must improve people’s experiences in their homes, communities and in every interaction that they have with Halton Housing.    

This is why we are investing in Customer Relationship Management (CRM); not just the technology but also the ways of working that will enable us to gain a deep understanding of who our customers are, improve our communications and engagement with them and ultimately deliver excellent customer service tailored to their needs. 

Here’s our top 5 reasons why we’re embarking on a new CRM project underpinned by a new CRM system:

1. Raising the bar on customers’ experience

The number one reason for doing this is to improve things for our customers.  We want our customers to engage with us in a way that is convenient to them, whether that is phone, text, webchat, email, or social media and receive the same great level of service each time. 

A dedicated CRM system will bring together all customer interactions across all different channels into one single view, helping us to understand who our customers are, their journey so far and how we can best support them. 

2. Knowing who’s behind the door

All of our customers are different and what they need from us differs too.  That is why it is important that we understand and treat our customers as individuals, to make sure we provide the right service and support at the right time for them. An effective CRM system will allow us to move away from mass communication allowing us to engage with our customers on the things that we know matter most to them.   Customer segmentation and workflows will allow us to move away from one size fits all service delivery, to delivering services in a way that meets the individual needs of our customers.      

3. Get a step ahead of the game

CRM will help us to provide a better service to our customers when they contact us, but better still what if we can provide a better service without them having to contact us at all?  What if we can spot an issue before it becomes a problem for our customers?  Data and insight from our CRM system will help to us spot trends in things like complaints or repairs and use that insight to resolve issues but also forecast who else this might impact in the future and resolve issues before they occur.    

4. Data: the best it can be

Limited or inaccurate information can lead to mistakes.  Mistakes can have significant consequences for our customers and for us an organisation.  Embarking on CRM has enabled us to look at the data that we hold, to introduce standards around data quality and consistency, to train our people on the important of record keeping and data quality and to monitor and measure data quality more effectively.   As well as this, most modern CRM systems have built in data quality checks and validation that can also improve data quality.    

5. Value for money

An effective CRM system will make it easier, quicker, and more efficient to respond to customer queries and requests.  Data and insight will allow us to provide services and support where they are needed the most.  Technology and automation of administrative tasks will free up our colleagues to spend their time out in our communities supporting our customers.   All of this frees up time, resource and money that can be re invested in the services that matter most to our customers. 

We are only at the start of our CRM journey.  Design and development of our new system has begun, testing and training will start soon, and we hope to go live early next year.  This will be the springboard to new ways of working with our customers that will ultimately improve the quality of homes and services that we deliver.