Since first reporting on tenant satisfaction measures (TSM), overall satisfaction has continued to fall and complaints are increasing, says data and insight company Housemark.

Tenants are frustrated by poor customer experiences and unhappy about the way their complaints are being handled, which is putting landlords under pressure to perform better. One option for landlords who are looking to increase tenant satisfaction is to take advantage of conversational AI.

Increase tenant satisfaction with conversational AI

Contact centre agents require a wide range of skills and knowledge to support the services offered to tenants. Using chatbots and automating routine and repetitive tasks allows agents to focus on situations that need human intervention, and is a great way to improve service levels. However, for many housing providers, the biggest barrier to automation is knowing where to start.

8x8’s research shows that 92% of contact centre leaders using AI technology can resolve customer issues faster. 94% reported improvement in agent productivity, which demonstrates the value of the technology. In this blog, we discuss how 8x8 Intelligent Customer Assistant templates make it easier for housing associations to adopt conversational AI and the key considerations for successful automation in the contact centre.

Why use conversational AI?

Conversational AI specialises in understanding human language and emulating human behaviour to hold authentic digital and voice conversions. As a result, conversational AI delivers more personalised experiences than automation that relies on keywords to return pre-written responses to deliver higher tenant satisfaction scores.

Out-of-the-box templates

At 8x8, we have done the research, identified the most common use cases for conversational AI, and pre-built a set of user-friendly, plug-and-play templates to make it easier for housing associations to automate processes that transform tenant engagement.

8x8 templates include the following:

  • Route it: Callers are greeted and routed directly to the department with the right skills to handle their enquiries: finance, relocations, parking enquiries, and more. Calls are processed faster, without agent intervention, reducing call wait times and average call handling times.
  • Report it: Tenants can communicate with a voicebot or chatbot using conversational AI to simplify the reporting of incidents including damage to properties and neighbourhoods. Based on the context of the conversation, a ticket is automatically raised with the correct service team, reducing human error. Calls are deflected from busy agents and the average cost per interaction is reduced.
  • Ask it: Natural language processing provides tenants with answers to FAQs relating to property maintenance, paying rent, registering changes in their circumstances, etc, along with links to helpful portals and webpages. This option increases accessibility and provides 24/7 access to the information tenants need most.
  • Find it: Callers are provided with addresses, including office locations, house viewings, end-of-tenancy key drops, and making payments, quickly without the need for agent intervention. This template allows for additional information including directions, parking information, and local information to make it easier to find tucked-away properties.
  • Book it: This template integrates with calendars and uses conversational AI to empower tenants to make, edit, and reschedule appointments, without agent interaction, not only reducing calls to the contact centre but also reducing missed appointments.

8x8 templates are designed to be easily deployed with minimal customisation, allowing you to skip the complexity and jump right into building a highly scalable, always-available experience. And with translation options in over 100 languages, your contact centre can maintain a high standard of accessibility.

Implementing successful conversational AI

Housing associations manage a vast number of services and processes, and wherever you look there is something that could be automated. The answer to the successful adoption of AI-powered automation is to start small. Below are some of the considerations to make when choosing which templates to start with.

  1. Identify communication trends to understand the most frequently asked questions. Wrap-up codes and speech analytics are a great way to identify conversational trends and areas for automation.
  2. Understand how tenants engage with the process you wish to automate, and any other processes that may be affected. There is no point in automating one part of a process if it simply creates a requirement for a spreadsheet to be downloaded for the next action to take place.
  3. Ensure a contextual agent hand-off to avoid tenants getting trapped in an endless loop, becoming increasingly frustrated, having to repeat information and ultimately getting the total opposite effect of what you intended.

Delivering a seamless experience

AI-driven automation works best in an environment where there is a single platform for all communications, which integrates with CRM and other business systems to share information and deliver seamless tenant experiences. Increasingly, housing associations are updating old, inflexible systems to reap the benefits of modern technology and deliver better tenant experiences and operational efficiencies.

The impact on staff and tenants alike is clear. 41% of IT leaders believe companies will fall behind if they don’t adopt conversational AI capabilities to help make services accessible and inclusive and redirect labour costs to areas where human intervention is needed most.

Discover how conversational AI can improve tenant experiences with our guide 6 Ways Conversational AI Can Support Housing.