Introduction
Sage Homes is a Registered Provider of affordable housing across England, working with the largest house builders to deliver new housing for Shared Ownership (part buy, part rent) and low-cost rental homes.
Their residents are at the heart of the business which is why they are committed to providing high quality homes and an excellent service.
Since 2017, they have delivered over 5,000 homes, with a pipeline of more than 14,000 in contract.
The certainty and stability of Sage’s operating model allows them to bring additional capital and capacity to the UK housing market and remain focused on making affordable rent and low-cost ownership available to as many people as they can.
‘It is much easier to go back to residents on defects and queries as most of the updates are already within clixifix®– much more efficient for our team.
We can clearly see the timeframe for each defect as soon as we go onto the plot page and chase the items that are overdue.
The system has been great in making our defect process and defect reporting much more efficient.”
Case Study- MAY 2022.
Affordable housing providers, Sage Homes applaud clixifix® for their efficiency
With thousands of houses to manage, Sage Homes needed a system in place to improve communication. Defect and repair resolution software developers, clixifix® have been supporting Sage with their communication.
Sage Housing, Senior Defects Customer Advisor, Rumana Choudhury spoke to clixifix® about the improvements that have been made….
Q. What was the problem you were experiencing prior to implementing clixifix®?
○ All defects came into our mailbox which was difficult to manage.
○ Working between two systems to raise defects.
○ Difficulty of working on each system.
○ Unable to report on and monitor defects e.g. assess which items are overdue / how many defects raised across a site or developer business unit.
○ Unable to upload lists e.g. End of defects list.
○ Difficult to monitor developer responses and operate through emails only.
Q. How much more efficient would you say your defect management process now that you are using clixifix®?
○ The process of raising defects is much easier.
○ The process of running reports for our developers and ourselves is very quick.
○ We can clearly see the timeframe for each defect as soon as we go onto the plot page and chase the items that are overdue.
○ Less emails as residents have started using the customer portal.
○ Easy to see the last update as it comes up in the reporting as the latest activity.
Q. What would you say your top 3 features are?
○ Reporting.
○ User friendly way to add tickets.
○ Customer portal.
Q. How much time do you save per week and/or month on compiling reporting for your superiors/peers/clients now that you have the reporting suite on clixifix®?
○ N/A – These were collated for us by our data analysts previously. Now we can run these everyday ourselves within minutes. This is helpful for us as it allows us to quickly prepare for a meeting with our developers.
Q. How much time would it have taken you to compile a complete history in readiness for a customer complaint resolution prior to using clixifix®?
○ Depending on the list of defects (could be 45 mins to an afternoon) – we are still in the process of doing this as we are currently dealing with complaints prior to having clixifix®.
Q. How has the collaboration with your homeowners/residents/subbies/clients improved?
○ Customer portal has improved as residents submit tickets and discussions for their own queries.
○ Some developers are using clixifix® very well so we are receiving constant updates and closures. This has saved a lot of chasing as it is quicker for them to update us rather than emailing.
○ Some developers have refused to use it as it does not align with their systems and they are already using systems for their other clients.
Their rented homes are let exclusively to people on local authority housing waiting lists. Their shared ownership homes offer a step on to the property ladder with a part buy, part rent way of owning a home.
Sage are regulated by the Social Housing Regulator.
They pride ourselves on the high standards they set, from the build quality of their homes to the service that their residents receive.
Q. How does your complaint/enquiry process compare now that you are using clixifix®?
○ It is easier to collate dates for defects raised when investigating complaints and clixifix® displays this information clearly. However we are still going through emails when collating information for a complaint as some developers are not using clixifix® as intended, therefore we have to check all areas for updates from the developer.
○ When all the developers start using clixifix® primarily for all updates instead of emails, the complaint process should be seamless / simple to pull any updates from clixifix®.
Q. How much time did you previously spend per day or week chasing Sub Contractors over the phone and how has this changed since using clixifix®?
○ We would be chasing our developers every day on outstanding jobs. We are currently still doing this due to the number of defects or lack of updates from our developers.
○ When the developers are all using clixifix® as intended, this should be more efficient.
Q. How has clixifix® changed your customer care approach and level of efficiency in dealing with your homeowners/residents?
○ It is much easier to go back to residents on defects and queries as most of the updates are already within clixifix®– much more efficient for our team.
○ When reporting on defects, we can also follow up with residents on their other defects and confirm if they are closed at the same time (as all defects for a plot will be displayed on one page). – Again more efficient.
Q. How have you found the support from the team at clixifix® throughout your time as a customer?
○ Amazing – super quick and helpful always. Abby, Clair and Nicola have always responded in a timely manner and constantly offered solutions when things were not working as they should.
Q. How are you utilising the additional time that clixifix® has freed up across the customer care team at Sage Housing?
○ Chasing developers on defects.
○ Working and updating our own internal systems that support clixifix® to ensure that the correct information is pulled through and accurate.
Q. How has the information available through the reporting suite on contractor performance and defect trends analysis supported your business?
○ Easy and quick to report on defects across our developers, trends and sites.
Q. What was your experience of the implementation of clixifix® for you and your team?
○ There was a lot of data that had to be assessed / corrected in order to set up the developer client accounts (as all of our developers needed to be set up as sub contractors). This was also the same for reporting as all the developers had to be categorised into a region, in order for us to be able to report on them.
○ Once the system was fully in place and the customer portal was rolled out (the relevant plot issue resolved) the system has been great in making our defect process and defect reporting much more efficient.
○ Also any changes that need to be made on clixifix® such as changes to developers email address need to go through clixifix support tickets. This cannot be done by us therefore causes a delay for our team as we need to raise the ticket via email if urgent.
