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Many social housing providers are now focussing on understanding their customers better, including profiling, segmentation, “risks” and cost profiles to help them provide services more effectively and to reduce their costs and risks.
Yet many say they are not yet effectively or proactively managing a customer insight process or monitoring themes for strategic review to reduce costs or improve service provision as part of their continuous improvement work. All agree that it is important to do this and to see the results of doing it: “If the goal of improved outcomes is not achieved then the work is pointless”.
In order to address this issue, Arena is currently implementing a pilot project with Red Kite Community Housing to look at developing a practical approach to customer segmentation. The aim of the project is to: target Red Kite’s services, support and interventions more effectively; anticipate customers’ needs before they arise; and predict the needs of potential new customers.
In our recent strategic survey:
- Three quarters of respondents said that using residents’ profiles, preferences and past history to anticipate their needs, target service delivery and achieve greater efficiency was “very important”, and the remaining quarter said it was “fairly important”;
- 100% said they anticipated Customer Insight becoming “more important”;
The key issues which clients reported facing in delivering results included:
- “Having a suitable IT system that can hold and use this information”
- “Blending our own data on properties and customers with external neighbourhood profiling and general community data. Need to link to broad information in areas such as health, education and the local economy”
- “Data consolidation- far too many data silos in evidence”
- “Lack of skills within our staff team and lack of collated data”
Respondents agreed that the sector has limited experience in market research and customer insight techniques.
- Only a third felt their staff had the rights skills;
- Three quarters didn’t believe they have the right software to support their needs.
Some organisations are seeking to learn more and want to understand which approaches are suitable for them to deliver maximum value from the insight analysis.
However, getting and using customer insight effectively requires both the right skills and use of the right software to deliver tangible results.
Against this background, Red Kite has approached Arena for help with identifying relevant sources of data and developing a customer segmentation model.
If this is successful, we may progress on to supplying software for processing and reporting on the segmentation profiles and establishing ways of using them effectively to improve performance. We will keep you posted on progress.
If you would like to know more about Tracker software, the Tracker network and support available our team would be happy to discuss your particular needs and as appropriate arrange a visit to demonstrate to you and your colleagues the wide range of options available. So please call +44 (0)1603 813 932 or Email: info@arenapartnership.co.uk
