Customers /

B3Living

RENTSENSE

LOCAL AUTHORITY

How B3Living achieved their lowest ever arrears by focusing on support and care

B3Living is a housing association based in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, and they have around 5,000 homes.

Highlights

5k

Properties

21.3%

Arrears Reduction

A conversation with several of the team at B3Living to discuss their new approach to income collection and how their customer ethos of a ‘personalised and inclusive’ service has resulted in their best ever performance. Interviewees by order of appearance are: Chris Ellison – Executive Director, Sophia Howells – Head of Housing, Sarah Styles – Rents Manager and Phil Drati – Rent Sustainment Advsior

Mobysoft

B3Living’s strategy for 2021-2024 is better futures, how do you see the rent team’s role supporting this and influencing these outcomes?

Chris Ellison

 

The rents team is fundamental to our better futures strategy. They ensure the organisation keeps going, by collecting the rent, and they also ensure that our customers can stay in their homes and not face any future housing crises. Better futures sums it up really, they are ensuring the better future of the organisation and a better future for our customers.

Sophia Howells

As a team, they’re about so much more than just income collection. Our colleagues really know our customers, they know what additional support is out there and they have really good links in the community generally so they can really focus on sustainment.

Mobysoft

Your customer ethos is “a personalised and inclusive service” how has RentSense helped with this?

Sarah Styles

When we call someone, it’s about them. There’s no script. Now it is much easier to focus and spend our quality time with customers who need it.

Sophia Howells

It means now they can give really targeted support.

Chris Ellison

 

For me that’s always been the business case for RentSense, and less of ‘can you do the same with fewer people’, but it’s more ‘can you help more people with the same size team’ and ‘can you really focus your resources around the people that need it the most’? I really notice that when I sit with this team now. They know customers by their voice. When you’re in financial hardship, someone really knowing and understanding your situation means a lot

How did RentSense help in the pandemic?

Mobysoft

When choosing suppliers/partners what qualities & synergies do you look for, and how has the partnership with Mobysoft evolved?

Chris Ellison

 

I have worked with Mobysoft before, and the service and product is tailored around the needs and parameters of each landlord. They also invest in the business relationship, which means the element of trust is there, which is fundamental for me.

With Mobysoft there is also a clear sense of shared values and outcomes, they have a real understanding of the issues and the sector and bring a lot of information and data together that’s hard to access elsewhere. So that understanding is data based and they flag to you what you need to be aware of.

Sophia Howells

The team regularly feedback and they have all consistently said everyone they have worked with at Mobysoft has been extremely responsive, so it is a really positive working relationship.

Mobysoft

What difference has RentSense made?

Sarah Styles

What the team have now is a more focused approach, as they have fewer cases to sift through and more time. There a host of other benefits as well, for example now the system automatically predicts year end balances so we can check and verify direct debits are correct for year end. Also, if someone is off and we can get another officer to work their priority one cases.

Phil Drati

 

We also have the safety net of knowing that cases aren’t missing with RentSense.

Mobysoft

From a management perspective how beneficial are the reports?

Sarah Styles

You know what the workload is and everyone has visibility of this. It is easy to use and the reports help in so many ways, for example when being audited, I can press a button and give the auditors all the details they need.

Mobysoft

Why and how have you used RentSense in the past and how has it helped and why has it been important?

Sarah Styles

Through Covid RentSense gave us the time to support our tenants, RentSense has helped us manage.

Phil Drati

 

We have responded to the pandemic and focused on collecting with care, which RentSense has really supported. It really demonstrates the value of knowing your customers really well.

Mobysoft

How do Mobysoft and RentSense help when switching HMS systems?

Phil Drati

 

Mobysoft have been amazing in terms of support and implementation with the transition from our old housing management system to our new system. You were able to give us support and assistance the whole way through for the implementation.

Mobysoft

Has RentSense impacted job satisfaction of officers?

Cathryn Vallender

It has made a big difference. RentSense provides that safety net, we are not getting incorrect recommendations or trawling for cases that could’ve been missed off the list. We trust the RentSense algorithm and have a more concise workload.

Mobysoft

How has the service been from Mobysoft since go live?

Sarah Styles

 

The service from Mobysoft was excellent. Everyone is really responsive, and for us it was obvious from the outset the people at Mobysoft understood income collection. When we went through the deployment they did not tell us the software works this way so we would need to. They listened to us, asked some great questions, and set the system around our needs.

Mobysoft

Would you recommend RentSense to other users?

Yes, definitely we have enjoyed the working partnership, and we are still developing it.”