How to nudge the tenants that won't shift to digital channels

Have you recently launched a new customer portal but finding your tenants aren’t making the move? Or maybe you’ve deployed a new chatbot and found that it’s not being used as much as you’d like. 

• Here are our top tips
• Nudge and Shift

Your tenants, like all of us, are creatures of habit, which is why for some, moving away from something that they know, are familiar with and find most comfortable, simply isn’t an option. For many, picking up the telephone is just what they automatically turn to.

So, how do you nudge them to shift to your brand new digital channels?

The most important thing you need to be able to do is show your tenants there’s nothing to be afraid of. You need to explain that these new digital channels are designed with them in mind, to make their lives easier. So how do you do that? How do you show them how simple and easy it is?

Here are our top tips...

• Video marketing. For those who are more visual learners, being able to see clear, how-to videos will help them see just how easy it is. You can release a series of videos on your social channels, think ‘How to raise a repair’, ‘How to make a payment’, ‘How to check the status of a repair’ - short, 30 second clips to educate your tenants.
  
  
• Along with the same idea, provide demo opportunities. This time a longer video that demonstrates the user journey from start to finish. Having these demos saved somewhere for your tenants to refer back to is a great idea to ensure they can always find help.
  
  
• Offer support. This is vital, your tenants don’t want to feel they’re being left to work it out for themselves. If they have a question they need answering, they should have a quick, direct access point to your team, whether that be through a chatbot, FAQs page, live chat etc.
  
  
• Take an omi-channel approach. Use every channel you have available to push your new digital platforms - mapping current customer behaviour to target their existing communications. A one-off email or URL included in newsletter isn't enough to get them choosing digital. If someone reaches out to you via social, use DMs and paid promotion to showcase your portal. Or if they always phone in, encourage (or even incentivise) call centre staff to go through the registration process with them to shift them online.    
  
  
• Sometimes it’s a simple case of grabbing their attention to get them to sign up, once they’re in, they can see for themselves how easy it is. There are plenty of on-page optimisation tactics you can use to make it as easy as possible to register - like pop-ups or chatbots - or why not try an automated email marketing campaign with an incentive? A simple “Sign up to our customer portal to be in with a chance of winning a £50 Amazon voucher” should do the trick. 

Getting customers online is no easy task. You need to take a personalised approach, explaining the specific benefits at the right time.

For many housing associations, there simply isn't enough time in the day to manage existing customer relationships and problems whilst trying to encourage self-service and channel shift. 

Need some help? We’d like to introduce Nudge and Shift, our advanced customer engagement campaigns made by us, Prodo! With our experience of working in the social housing sector, we’ve supported hundreds of housing associations with digital transformation.

With this in mind, we like to think we know our way around the industry, understanding that your tenants are first and foremost your priority. That’s why we’ve launched Nudge and Shift…

Nudge is designed to kickstart customers registering to use your online services.

Shift keeps customers coming back for more with data-driven optimisation and closed-loop reporting.

You can even see how much you can save when implementing Nudge & Shift with our handy calculator tool.

The only thing left for you to do...choose which is right for your organisation right now depending on your current channel shift status - Nudge or Shift?

If you'd like to chat to our experts about it, we'd love to help! Simply book a call at a time that suits you and we can go into more detail about how Nudge and Shift work. 

Header Image Source