AI? It’s already here
Forget futuristic robots, artificial intelligence already has the capability to improve existing services
“I think there’s a tendency when people talk about AI, to think of it as a big homogenous thing that’s going to take over the world and be a huge problem,” says Thomas Lancefield, Lead for Social Housing at Salesforce. “But actually, it’s already part of our everyday life. Whether it’s when we open a bank account or get emails from brands, they’re using AI to communicate with us and we’re interacting with that AI. Housing should think about AI in that way as well.”
Lancefield confesses to “thinking about AI all of the time and how the sector could be using it”. He has a number of practical ideas about how the technology could change the way housing organisations work in small, but important ways. One of these ways involves making the interaction between tenants and customer service teams much more efficient; not by replacing customer-facing staff with AI bots, but by using AI to improve the interactions.
Improving customer experience
“I’ve sat in contact centres and listened to the calls come in, and a lot of the time, the calls are not necessarily even something that housing providers can handle or deal with,” he recalls. “And the organisation itself only has a finite amount of resource, so having AI as a way to easily summarise what that call is about, signpost people in the right direction and support the customer service agent in that role is really important.”
When it comes to common issues for tenants, such as damp and mould, Lancefield says AI can also be used to prevent calls having to be made in the first place: “Analytics that use AI or machine learning can find out which block or flat is at risk, so you can be proactive.”
Furthermore, when this AI functionality is combined with good data, it can allow landlords to connect the dots better and understand what might be happening across their stock.
“If you are aware of that data – that the block of flats has been having issues with damp and mould – then maybe there are other customers having similar issues in that block. Again, what that does is drive a much more proactive approach from the housing association.”
Lancefield is describing use cases that are perfectly possible today and indeed are being used by organisations in a wide array of sectors. This is AI, not as a futuristic job-stealing machine, but as a hyper-efficient data processing tool that uses existing knowledge to provide better, faster solutions.
“AI is already part of our everyday life.”
Thomas Lancefield
Lead for Social Housing, Salesforce
“When we talk about use cases for AI, what should be driving it is the outcome you want to deliver and not the system itself.”
Thomas Lancefield
Lead for Social Housing, Salesforce
“When we talk about use cases for AI, what should be driving it is the outcome you want to deliver and not the system itself.”
Data is everything
However, a notable bump in the road within the housing sector is the variable quality of data.
“Obviously, you need good data to be able to do this and I think the sector’s problems with data quality and data management is well documented,” says Lancefield. “There are technology issues in terms of systems that don’t necessarily ‘speak’ very well to each other, but more to the point, there’s a cultural issue around how organisations think about data.”
He explains that the heart of this issue is the same problem that impacts housing providers at so many levels: a lack of joined-up thinking between the various services they offer.
“You need to think about the full customer journey,” he continues. “We know that customers don’t just interact with customer services; they may have a repairs technician, a support worker, etc. You have to think about the lifecycle of data and what people need at each point in time and how that data can be serviced, so that the data the contact centre agent uses is the same as the repairs agency. It helps make sure we don’t have these ‘islands of data’ that then make it really difficult to serve the customer and provide a consistent service.
“At too many housing providers I speak to, the contact centre ends up becoming a triage service because they don’t actually know what’s going on at the customer’s property. But I don’t think that’s just a technology problem. When we talk about use cases for AI, what should be driving it is the outcome you want to deliver and not the system itself.”
A new generation
Although the use cases Lancefield highlights are mostly about enhancing existing services, he still believes the technology will transform the sector over the next decade or so. “It’s not that far away,” he says. “So actually, you need to start that journey now because the longer you wait, the further behind your organisation will get.”
Part of the reason for the urgency is recruitment, according to Lancefield. Housing providers should be attractive places to work. But the sector could be in danger of missing out on an entire generation if the technology it deploys is outdated.
“People, particularly young people, get turned off because when they turn up to organisations, they’re often having to use technology that their mums and dads, or even, their grandparents may have used,” he adds. “They’re probably not anticipating having to look through databases and scan lots of different systems; they’re probably just expecting to have a conversation with a system and be able to get all the information they need that way.
“If you want to retain and get talent into the sector, I think it’s important you think about getting your systems and data right and start to be able to innovate and use some of the AI capability that’s available.”
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