New 1st Touch Doorstep Appointments Module Drives Both Efficiency And Customer Service Levels For Social Landlords

Our innovative new Doorstep Appointments module was developed in response to on-going feedback and it will make significant savings for our clients.

1st Touch (www.1sttouch.com), the UK’s leading technology provider for the social housing sector, has announced the launch of a new Doorstep Appointments module. The new system has been designed to simplify and speed up appointment scheduling by either mobile housing association staff or directly by tenants through a self-service portal and self-service app.

Whilst visiting tenants at home, the new module enables mobile operatives to book appointments through their handheld devices, for services such as: repairs, financial inclusion reviews or care assessments. This eliminates the need for staff to return to the office before attempting to schedule suitable times and dates or spend time getting hold of the appropriate staff to complete an appointment.

The software, which is integrated with 1st Touch’s widely acclaimed 360° dashboard application, enables the operatives to request the best appointment times available, prioritize or rearrange the appointments made, order text reminders, book follow up actions and record related text and voice notes. The new module also enables all operatives visiting a client to become multi-disciplinary, by offering appointments for a full range of services not just those in their own area. Thus, a repair operative can arrange a visit by a housing officer to discuss issues such as anti-social behaviour or estate issues. Alternatively, a care operative could arrange an appointment for a financial inclusion officer to discuss the prospects of a discretionary housing payment where, for example, a tenant has lost income through ill health.

As these functions are carried out online, with the tenant present, the system delivers a highly efficient solution that also boosts customer service levels and perceptions.

The software can also be used as an integral part of 1st Touch’s widely acclaimed tenant self-service portal and app, enabling customers to book appointments themselves online through their own devices 24/7/365.

Commenting on the new module Greg Johns CEO of 1st Touch noted, “Our innovative new Doorstep Appointments module was developed in response to on-going feedback and it will make significant savings for our clients. Many landlords wanted to mobilise tenant-facing staff and needed the tools to support this level of engagement with their customers. The new module meets these requirements, significantly improving operational efficiency by ensuring that mobile staff can request a full range of appointments whilst visiting customers at home. This also boosts customer service levels by significantly strengthening the relationship between a social landlord’s staff and its tenants.

"Similarly, by building this same technology into our Tenancy Self Service portal we are also enabling tenants to take control of the appointment scheduling process at their own convenience and through their own devices. We are confident that this will prove extremely popular with Landlords seeking to add new cost-effective solutions and also with customers who will appreciate the increased flexibility and choice.”

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Note to Editors: About 1st Touch (www.1sttouch.com)

Southampton based 1st Touch, a subsidiary of Aareon AG (www.aareon.com), has enabled dozens of field workforce-based organisations to embrace new mobile technologies and so achieve significant savings, greater productivity and more cost-effective use of resources. 1st Touch Mobile delivers clear and unique benefits: These include the system’s acclaimed ‘Smart Airtime’ feature where ‘airtime’ is minimised and the system is always available with or without ‘airtime’. The system’s flexibility through simple customer control over forms creation and amendment is also widely acclaimed. There is Integration to multiple back office and other enterprise software applications, so that data is entered only once.

With its widely acclaimed mobile technology, 1st Touch has a clear focus on the Social Housing and Local Government markets. Many social housing providers and local authorities, at large, now benefit from the fast and tangible, best of breed benefits that 1st Touch mobile technology delivers to the enterprise.

To date, over 50% of the social housing market, which has deployed mobile technology, has chosen to implement 1st Touch. In local government, 1st Touch has already been adopted for a wide range of mobile workforce uses. Ready to use applications for local authority organisations include: Public Buildings, Highways/Street Services, Environmental/Waste Management, Revenues and Benefits, together with Planning Control and Trading Standards.

1st Touch software is available on a wide variety of platforms including: Windows Mobile, Apple and Android.

For further information on 1st Touch please contact:

Cherry Rance
1st Touch
+44 (0) 871 716 3060
cherry.rance@1sttouch.com
www.1sttouch.com

or

Leigh Richards
The Right Image PR & Marketing Group
07758 372527
leigh.richards@therightimage.co.uk
www.therightimage.co.uk