Abri

Abri is one of the largest housing providers in the south of England, managing 35,000 homes and work on behalf of 80,000 customers. Abri means ‘shelter’. They believe everyone has the right to a safe, warm, sustainable home and to be part of a community where everyone has the opportunity to belong, grow and thrive. They’re aiming to build at least 1,000 homes a year for the next 10 years.

Background

Abri has been working with BPA for many years. Abri originally asked BPA to develop an independent call evaluation process to help identify a more accurate reflection of the Quality of Service being offered, as well as making recommendations around how Abri’s service could be improved. During this time, Abri developed the quality monitoring programme to include emails. In 2020, BPA was then invited to work with Abri to:

• Develop a quality monitoring programme for Webchats
• Achieve alignment and consistency of quality measures for each contact channel; calls, email and webchat
• Drive improvement and consistency in quality scores for all contact channels

The introduction of quality monitoring for webchats also coincided with the launch of Abri’s MyRadian Customer portal. 2020 will be a year we all remember for the pandemic and the impact it had on so many businesses. Many of Abri’s services had to be suspended during the first lockdown in March 2020 and Abri saw a 15% drop in call contact volumes.

However, once the first lockdown was lifted and services slowly resumed, Abri saw an increase contact through the MyRadian portal webchat facility and via email (54%), whilst call volumes quickly returned to pre lockdown levels.

The Solution

Abri’s first requirement in developing a monitoring programme for webchats was to agree the quality measures and design a scorecard. BPA provided guidance on what these measures should be and shared best practice with Abri to help produce the quality guidelines and the scorecard.

Abri has used BPA’s quality software, Builder for a number of years, and we knew exactly the type of reporting Abri wanted in order to provide a detailed view of the quality of interactions at Organisation, Team and Individual level. Builder also enabled Abri to identify the lower performing measures and to focus on driving improvement in these areas.

Once the quality measures were agreed, quality monitoring was undertaken on a random sample of webchats, as a ‘temperature check’ to see where Abri were and the improvements which were required.

The first set of quality scores produced results of 79%, and through Builder’s reporting capability, Abri were quickly able to identify some key areas on which to focus and drive improvement. Abri also identified the need to ensure all colleagues understood the guidelines and the measures they
were being marked against.

In addition to aid coaching and development of colleagues, Team Leaders needed a greater understanding of Abri’s quality monitoring model and the measures being introduced. This was achieved through 6-weekly Calibration sessions, alternating between, webchat, emails and calls.

Key outcomes

• The introduction of quality monitoring on webchats to run alongside the call and email quality evaluations gave Abri a centralised model for quality monitoring. It helped ensure compliance with regulatory requirements and enabled Abri to focus and drive improvement in lower-scoring quality measures.
• Abri’s key learning takeaway was the importance of investing sufficient time in bringing all stakeholders together to share objectives, learnings and to carry out extensive calibration sessions.
• Frequent and open communication have enabled Abri to build confidence, knowledge, share best practice and build a strong partnership with BPA.