Vico Homes (formerly known as Wakefield and District Housing) was established in 2005 and is one of the UK’s largest social housing providers, with over 32,000 homes and 65,000 tenants across the Wakefield district and the North of England. To support its strategic aim to provide great customer service, Vico Homes were looking to rollout a customer portal tightly integrated to their digital engagement platform (Salesforce), to allow tenants to self-serve.

The new customer portal needed to allow a tenant to:

• Check their rent balance.
• Make a payment.
• Raise and track the status of non-emergency repairs.
• Check their tenancy details, including tenure and assigned account holders.
• Review their rent history over different time periods.
• Setup a direct debit.
• Review their direct debit schedule.
• Search for knowledge articles related to an enquiry type.
• Raise a series of different enquiries (such as reporting anti-social behaviour, raising a complaint, paying a complement, notifying of a change in circumstance, reporting an estates problem).
• View previous enquiries submitted and upload supporting information.
• Review an account summary (detailing credits and charges incurred).
• Receive key notifications relating to items needing attention.
• Update their key contact information.
• Securely access the solution on web and mobile.

Alscient addressed these requirements following a phased approach.

We initially worked with Vico Homes on the refinement of the user stories and provided a solution design which explained how the requirements would be met. Following sign-off of the design we then built out the required functionality over a series of two-week delivery sprints. After each sprint a Show & Tell session was held that demonstrated the capability and provided a mechanism to incorporate feedback.

Following build, the solution underwent system testing and then training was provided on usage of the solution. UAT support was then provided to fully ensure the system fully met internal requirements. Following successful completion of UAT, the solution was promoted to the live environment and external communications were sent to tenants to advertise the new portal solution.

All aspects of the project were successfully delivered, providing a great customer self-service offering. The system has now been operational for three months and 7,300 tenants have registered for the service. Vico Homes have seen a reduction in calls being raised by tenants with over 2,500 new enquiries being raised by the portal.

Following the successful rollout of the web customer portal Vico Homes are now planning on extending out the features that are provided to tenants via the portal. Additionally, consideration is being given to support a mobile native solution to take advantage of push notifications and other mobile capabilities such as Face ID authentication.