Improving resident engagement with personalised, hybrid communications

The importance of driving engagement

Customer service is vital for housing associations and positive customer service experiences, starts with driving engagement where it matters.

Positive engagement encapsulates all types of communications through consistency, different media formats and relevant content that supports, guides and connects audiences, to bring forth meaningful interactions that drive organisational outcomes.

Driving engagement not only benefits housing associations in relation to the association-tenant relationship but ‘it’s leads to cost savings and better service satisfaction’ (Inside Housing, 2020), helping both the bottom line strategies of the organisation and the overall goal they are working to achieve.

This makes driving engagement a core part of communication strategies within housing associations, with media formats working together to deliver key messages, updates and important information.

Getting the balance right

With increased resident expectations, driving positive engagement is becoming harder and harder to maintain and thus the communications that housing associations send need to be easily accessible, contain relevant content and be delivered at the right time for positive engagement and experiences to take place.

Finding the right balance for your audience, is key to its success. One media format no longer works to maintain engagement levels required, that’s why a multi-channel, hybrid mailing service works best, bringing together channels that cohesively deliver messages whilst driving responses.

From social media updates, hybrid communications such as postal letters, digital communications and website updates, offer the perfect blend of communications to drive content to residents in a relevant, interactive way.

Utilising this blended approach, offers a streamlined way of managing different resident expectations whilst offering formats that can connect with every resident.

Many housing associations are taking this approach and digitalizing it, so that all communication management (when considering end to end communications such as email, post and text) are managed within one account.

This is called a hybrid communications approach

Hybrid technology enables organisations to seamlessly communicate with their audiences in an effective cost-efficient way, regardless of whether employees are working from home or the office allowing for agile working whilst offering their audiences the same standard of service and saving time and money.

This provides a streamlined, digital-first approach to sending a variety of communications and can result in both time and cost savings when compared to traditional mail whilst retaining the high impact and visibility benefits of post.

It’s all about taking the hybrid method and cross-communicating in a way that provides choice and generates outcomes, providing a detailed understanding of audience requirements as well as needs and wants.

This provides housing associations with control over the communications sent, as well as increased time efficiencies and cost savings that can be used to help drive their bottom line goals. Whether the approach contains one or all media formats available, these services are being adopted at a rapid pace, since COVID-19 so that communication is managed, regulated and can be produced securely no matter where staff are working.

CFH Docmail Limited: the approved hybrid communication supplier

With a proven history of supporting housing associations increase resident engagement, CFH Docmail is the approved supplier of delivering secure hybrid communications.

From online digital delivery to printed and posted communications, CFH work with you to scope out your communication requirements, creating a bespoke solution helping you to achieve your goals.

Through industry-leading accreditations and the latest technology, we can support your challenges, enhance your processes and help you increase your resident engagement.

To find out more or for a free communication review please get in touch, we’d love to talk to you about your communications objectives and how we can help you achieve these.

References:
https://www.insidehousing.co.uk/comment/comment/understanding-and-unlocking-the-power-of-resident-engagement-60291