Transforming State Housing

By Philippa Jones – Executive Lead, Transformation Programme, Housing New Zealand Corporation

Housing New Zealand is undergoing its largest change in decades.

As the country’s largest social landlord, we are responsible for 69,000 tenancies that house more 200,000 people.

The changes are about how we ensure our limited resources are targeted towards helping those in the greatest need.

At the same time we are replacing our aging core IT systems. This technology enabled business change will transform the way we deliver our core services and manage our $15 billion housing portfolio.

Over the next three years the financial benefits from the transformation of our business are expected to exceed $75 million.

As part of our transformation programme we have been reviewing every aspect of our business and refocusing on our core business which is managing our tenancies and housing portfolio.

When our transformation is complete New Zealand will have a fairer state housing system and the Corporation will provide more efficient and responsive services with the right houses in the right places.

New Zealanders will also get a greater return on the $15 billion investment they have in state houses.

The first stage of our transformation programme is the introduction of a new service delivery model.

We are introducing a bigger and better Customer Services Service with new technology which ultimately will speed up our response to people who ask for help.

We have also established specialist teams to deal with matters such as debt, income-related rents and Tenancy Tribunal matters, freeing up our tenancy managers to be out and about in the community more to deal with the more complex problems that cannot be resolved over the phone.

In short we are making it easier for people to reach us when they need help or information.

In the past customers needed to walk in or phone our local offices to address their enquiries. In some cases customers had to wait days for our tenancy managers to return calls for very basic enquiries.

It made practical and fiscal sense to better utilise our contact centre which has been in operation since 2003. What has emerged is a bigger and better Customer Services Centre that is no longer just a contact centre but an enhanced service centre for our customers.

From April 10 we started delivering more services through the Customer Services Centre.

The Customer Services Centre is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Customers are now able to get a greater range of services from our Customer Services Centre housing advisors without the need to step outside their front door.

We already know anecdotally that many of our customers are embracing this opportunity and the increased caller demand and feedback demonstrate this.

The flipside to offering more services has been longer waiting times for some customers during peak periods which generally are 9am to 3pm weekdays.

For example on most Monday’s we can receive up to six times more calls compared with weekend day. This is one of the reasons we are so actively encouraging our customers to also utilise the service outside of peak periods.

We always knew this would be a difficult period as we transitioned not only our own, but also our customers’ behaviour. We accept that for some people the long waiting times have been frustrating and we apologise for that.

We are currently working to improve wait times and we are confident this is happening.

I urge our customers to be patient with the Corporation as we work through the peaks and troughs of implementing such a big change in the way we deliver services.

This new service delivery model is in its infancy and we still have some way to go before our transformation programme is fully implemented.

The next phase will be the introduction of further new technology and the coming months will continue to be challenging as we prepare for the new processes that follow the implementation of new technology.

This new technology will help us to deliver more consistent, streamlined customer services, improve our housing portfolio and provide us with the information to operate more effectively. This includes understanding our customer better.

This new system is used around the world to manage large social housing portfolios and ensures our organisation is modernised and can meet today’s and future challenges.

We will be ensuring that our staff are fully supported by investing in time for training as they also come to grips with the changes. This will ultimately ensure we are doing the very best for our customers.

In the short-term there will inevitably be flow on affects for our customers and yes the service peaks and troughs will continue, but we will also be doing everything we can to lessen the impact on our customers.

We will not get it right all the time.

But the short term pain will ultimately result in a reliable, integrated, sustainable system that will provide consistent and responsive services for our customers and those in the greatest housing need.

ENDS

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