mhs homes began working with TSG at the beginning of 2021 to assist with developing the housing association’s Microsoft-first approach; this led to discussions around leveraging the Power Platform, Dataverse, Electronic Data Record Management (EDRM) and then a Dynamics 365 Customer Voice deployment project.
The Organisation
mhs homes is a charitable housing association operating in North Kent; it owns and manages over 9,500 homes making them the largest independent social landlord in Kent. mhs homes’ ultimate ambition is to help end the housing crisis in the area by providing safe and sustainable homes.
The Challenge
mhs homes regularly conducts surveys with its customers to get feedback on its services. The organisation does this in near real time once a service transaction has been completed. Previously, this was a manual process as they carried out telephone-based tenant surveys.
The specific challenges included:
- Time-consuming to conduct surveys
- Restricted survey volumes
- Difficult to increase the scale of surveys
- Provided limited customer insight
mhs homes was looking to streamline and automate its customer survey processes to improve the quantity and quality of customer engagement and ultimately deliver greater insights. It wanted to be in a position where it would be possible to integrate customer satisfaction data with data from other areas of the business to provide richer data analysis.
In light of the new Tenant Satisfaction Measures (TSMs) from April 2023, mhs homes also needed to ensure it was maintaining a strong standard of practice with tenant satisfaction surveys and aiding regulatory compliance moving forward.
The Core Solution
Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice presented the best-fit solution for mhs homes due to capabilities such as survey automation, CRM integrations, automated workflows, and much more. It also aligned with mhs homes’ Microsoft-first strategy and would maximise its return on investment (ROI) for Microsoft 365 (M365).
After a couple of scoping sessions, mhs homes and TSG kicked off a two-month project working in collaboration to implement two proof of concepts:
- A bulk one-off survey to all homeowners (800 customers)
- Automated post-completion repairs surveys
TSG’s proposed solution to fit mhs homes’ requirements:
- Microsoft Dynamics 365 Customer Voice (linked to the Power Platform)
- Microsoft Dataverse as a data storage solution
- Integration with mhs homes’ on-premises data warehouse (including all repairs data) to trigger surveys
- Integration to Capita OPENHousing (CRM System) to record survey sends and customer unsubscribes
- All data available for integration into mhs’ data
To implement the solution, TSG ensured mhs homes had all the correct licences set up to install Microsoft Customer Voice, then worked together to connect its customer data, design surveys, collect responses and report it back into mhs homes’ housing management system.
The Impact
The solution was launched with great confidence; mhs homes were involved throughout the entire development of the solution, utilising the knowledge from TSG’s experts to develop new skills and a deeper understanding of M365 technologies.
The tangible benefits achieved with mhs homes’ new automated survey platform:
- Increase in response volumes – in August 2022, mhs homes successfully sent out its first 800 surveys to homeowners and received double the responses it achieved via telephone surveys.
- Better customer insight – able to understand what matters most to its customers and their behaviours by connecting data from different areas.
- Easy-to-use and design, with the ability to expand the range of surveys without having to fund additional resource.
- Confidence in its survey platform ahead of the new Tenant Satisfaction Measures being introduced.
- ROI by leveraging existing M365 licences.
TSG work in a collaborative way; this allows us to see the solution develop and be a part of the build too. Working this way increases the skills in our business whilst utilising the expert knowledge that TSG has in all things Microsoft. We successfully sent out our first 800 surveys to homeowners in August and we are now using it daily for transactional repairs surveys.
Amanda Hodge, ICT Manager
