Voicescape’s award-winning technology, Caseload Manager, has outperformed expectations, doubling in size in the last 12 months.
Following its launch in 2021, the revolutionary technology has now been adopted by 22 registered social landlords (RSLs) across the UK, representing a 100% growth in customer numbers in the last year. Across those RSLs, 830,000 tenancies are now under management. In addition, Caseload Manager has replaced the legacy income analytics systems of 72% of customers.
The technology, which was developed in conjunction with social landlord Thirteen Group, assesses a range of long- and short-term risk factors, to make intelligent predictions about individual rent arrears cases for social landlords. Harnessing the power of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and Voicescape’s data science and behavioural insight expertise, it automatically processes all automated interventions, enabling housing associations to deliver the optimum outcome for both them and their residents.
Caseload Manager has resulted in Thirteen Group recovering £800,000 in the first few weeks of implementation, maintaining an improved arrears position of around £250,000 per week, while contributing towards the Group collecting an extra £9 million in income last year. It has also helped Thirteen to take 2,000 people out of debt, reducing average arrears for customers on Universal Credit by 25%, cutting evictions by 40%, and reducing the amount transferred to former debt by12%.
Chris Marshall, former Head of Housing Services at Thirteen, commented: 'As an organisation, Thirteen’s ambition is to use behavioural science to intervene at the right time, and with the right message, as well as increase the use of automation to free up our colleagues’ time to be able to spend with customers.
'Working with Voicescape enabled us to engage with more customers at a time that’s more convenient to them, in turn allowing us to provide the support and guidance they need. What Thirteen is now looking at across its business is how to take those principles and apply them to all of its services, e.g. anti-social behaviour.'
Caseload Manager enables social landlords to prioritise and focus resources. By minimising the arrears case list and automating interventions wherever it’s optimal, it vastly reduces the number of manual tasks that coordinators are required to do. For Thirteen Group, which owns and manages 35,000 homes across the North East, Yorkshire and the North of England, this has led to a reduction in the number of arrears cases requiring manual intervention by 65%. As a result, it has increased employee satisfaction, with 86% of users saying automation has made day-to-day work easier.
Gary Haynes, managing director of Voicescape - the UK's leading software provider of engagement solutions to the social housing and local authority sectors - said: 'Caseload Manager has been developed collaboratively to tackle real and immediate challenges within the social housing sector, around rising levels of debt, resource management, and customer engagement.
'In just over two years, the technology has gone from a standing start, to playing an integral role across a growing number of social landlords, while exceeding our expectations in terms of its growth.
'As the needs of the sector evolve, and more providers have the confidence to join a growing community of adopters, we will continue to invest in the technology to ensure the solution continues to transform arrears management, improve decision-making potential, and get to the heart of understanding individual tenants’ needs.'
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