Jacob Howell, lead digital strategist at Prodo, outlines five key things housing providers should think about when setting up their self-service portal
A self-service portal has become a pivotal element of digital transformation – empowering tenants to find the information they need, when they need it, on their own terms. But simply creating a portal and hoping it succeeds isn’t enough; it forms part of a wider channel shift strategy. Have you seen the results you were hoping for?
There’s no doubt that self-service portals are a worthwhile investment. They provide 24-hour customer support and improve customer satisfaction, offer a centralised area to host information and data, reduce call volumes, and can improve efficiency across your organisation.
But if you’re not seeing the results you’d hoped for, or you’re just starting out building your portal brief, here are five things you should think about for success.
1. Inform your customers
This might seem obvious, but we see it all the time: great portals go to waste because after an initial flurry of promotion, there’s no ongoing awareness campaigns to keep encouraging people to use it or showcasing the benefits.
Use every channel at your disposal – email, social, direct mail, phone lines – to keep reminding residents about what they can do on the portal and focus on why it benefits them to use it.
You could even create video content that shows customers how easy it is to use. One or two links in a monthly newsletter simply isn’t enough to drive adoption. You need to keep engaging with customers with relevant and timely messaging that encourages digital self-service – so if you’ve got the ability to send automated reminders and notifications, even better.
2. Keep it simple
Again, this comes back to the user experience and making sure your portal offering is as simple, easy and appealing to use as possible. If straight away during the registration process you’re asking for five different documents and various passcodes, customers won’t bother to sign up as it’s still easier to pick up the phone to get what they need.
Make it as easy as possible to start with – obviously for security reasons sometimes you do need additional verification steps, however if you can implement these after they’ve done an initial sign up, you’re more likely to get them hooked in to start. Remember, you’re competing with every other service provider out there and customer expectations are set higher than ever.
You might be finding that customers sign up but never actually use your portal. In this case, you’ll need to review the internal user journey and consider whether it’s laid out clearly with simple navigation and clear signposts throughout. Again, demo videos can be a really useful tool for showing customers what they can do within the portal.
3. Make data-driven decisions
One of the main benefits of a portal for a housing association is improved access to customer data. Get to know your customers even better through analysing the data behind your portal – is there a certain time people log in most? Is there one key feature that’s used a lot, versus something rarely engaged with?
It’s essential that you continue to monitor how users interact with your portal to then drive improvements and continually evolve what you’re offering, with the data to back it up. Tools like HotJar and Google Analytics can really help you visualise the user journey and provide metrics to reinforce your findings.
4. Digital is a choice
We’re always keen to make it clear that digital tools aren’t about replacing people – if anything, digital is here to help enable people to do more valuable work. Increased efficiencies mean more time and resource to allocate where it’s needed most. You’re not always going to be able to solve everything via your portal, and that’s okay. But for those that choose digital, you should make it as useful as possible.
“It’s essential that you continue to monitor how users interact with your portal to drive improvements and continually evolve what you’re offering”
Ultimately, demographics are shifting and more people are moving online than ever before. Your customer base now may not have the same needs or challenges as in the future, so putting in consistent effort to revolutionise your service offering is only going to pay dividends as technology evolves.
5. Don’t be afraid to innovate
Apps and portals are now a daily feature of most people’s lives – we check phone bill balances, pay electric bills, follow delivery updates and so much more from the palm of our hand. So at the very least, your portal needs to be optimised for mobile. But the housing associations that see the most engagement and success from their portals are the ones that look to replicate a more commercial user experience.
It can be easy to simply tick the box when it comes to functionality, doing the bare minimum. But offering advanced functionality can provide a measurably better experience – end-to-end appointment booking, location-based tracking of engineers, AI-powered diagnostics – the options really are limitless if you’re willing to step out of what’s traditionally been built.
Ultimately, we work with housing associations to provide digital solutions that customers want to use. There’ll always be some that either won’t or can’t shift to digital, but for those that do want to self-serve, you have to provide that option and make it worth their while. Otherwise, it’s destined to fail.
An established Umbraco and HubSpot Diamond Partner digital agency, Housing Digital Stakeholder Prodo has been accelerating growth and transformation since 1998. The organisation has since become the market leader in digital transformation for the social housing sector.
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