Accolade

Boosting tenant satisfaction with better Service Planning

Dwellings in the Netherlands are often owned or managed by housing corporations. These corporations typically rent and sell properties, and are responsible for providing homes for the elderly and people with special needs. Accolade is a housing corporation that owns approximately 16,000 of these homes. The organization operates in Friesland, a province in the northern part of the country. Like its counterparts in the Dutch housing industry, Accolade is responsible for maintaining its properties. To stay true to its mission of providing a comfortable living environment for all, Accolade wanted to be able to schedule maintenance and repair jobs more effectively.

Re-imagining customer support at Accolade

Accolade relied largely on paper records to schedule repair work for its 26 technicians. With 2,500 repair requests and up to 9,000 support calls per month, it was virtually impossible to schedule repair work optimally. The location of repair crews was not monitored, making it difficult to inform customers about estimated arrival times. As a result, customers would have to wait several hours for Accolade’s personnel to arrive, sometimes up to half a day. The lack of automation and oversight made the schedule error-prone and difficult to manage.

Accolade was ready to improve this. While they previously managed first-line customer support from different locations spread across Friesland, they decided to centralize it at their HQ in Heerenveen. They also knew they could rely on ORTEC to provide the right planning system.

Improved Service Planning paves the way for innovation and employee engagement

“With ORTEC Service Planning in place, the schedule automatically takes a number of factors into consideration,” explains Jochum de Vries, Accolade Application Manager.

ORTEC Service Planning leverages advanced analytics to optimize the schedule for Accolade’s technicians. An interface with the website allows tenants to log in online and put in a request for repairs. The appointment is registered and ORTEC’s scheduling solution automatically assigns the right technician for the job. A link was also established between ORTEC Service Planning and the technicians’ Personal Digital Assistant for real-time schedule management and reporting.

Accolade now draws up the schedules for its repair staff two days in advance. The schedule leaves enough room between jobs to allow for emergency repairs. The company’s entire staff was trained to use the system – illustrating how data and mathematics can be used to empower teams.

Improved efficiency in the scheduling process has opened up new possibilities for innovation as well. As more and more repair requests come in through the website, telephone traffic decreases and employees can focus on other things: like using social media to interact with customers and process their requests.

Hiltsje Rinsma adds: “New communications channels are opening up. For example, we already receive questions via Twitter, and we’re planning on using Facebook as well in the near future. Two of our employees thought it would be fun to answer questions on Twitter. They were so enthusiastic about it that other colleagues want to work with Twitter as well.”

A productivity boost drives a home run for customer service

“Before, only one team was trained to receive requests,” says Hiltsje Rinsma, Accolade Woonpunt Manager. “Employees had to memorize hundreds of different codes. With the system we have now, processing requests has become a lot easier. It’s even become a fun part of the job.”

The benefits of ORTEC Workforce Scheduling have been compelling, with a reported 25% increase in repair crew productivity obtained as a result. Information is now centralized and available for everyone, regardless of their location. Technicians can now be assigned more jobs depending on their location. Thanks to the link with the Personal Data Assistance, technicians no longer need to print out order sheets, and can start with the day’s repair work immediately.

Jochum de Vries adds: “While repair workers used to finish eight orders per day, they can now complete ten.”

But perhaps most importantly, customer satisfaction has also improved. Wait times have been significantly reduced and with rising digitalization, customers can make use of other channels to communicate with Accolade’s staff. A home run for everyone.