How Can Housing Associations Ride the New AI Wave?

Since the unveiling of ChatGPT in November 2022, there has been a surge of excitement around what AI can do. It has made an impact on every single industry, including the housing sector. Housing associations continually have a number of challenges to firefight, whether it's in relation to the physical components like building a house or renovation, through to administrative practices such as rent collection, or even IT practices. Housing associations can benefit in many different ways. What can housing associations do to make the most of this flurry of excitement around artificial intelligence?

Improving Customer Service to Tenants

Dealing with the rise of tenant complaints has long been a key part of any housing association's practice. Customer service is critical, not just to manage expectations, but to actually deliver what it promises. Many housing associations that specialise in building made-to-order properties can find themselves inundated with complaints relating to the quality of the materials or problems with the building itself, therefore, speeding up the customer service practice becomes a critical component of dealing with these problems.

Housing associations can use AI in the form of chatbots and virtual assistants to provide tenants with quick and accurate responses to improve their experience, resolve issues quickly and reduce the workload. Many organisations are now learning how to put live chat on a website and this can instantly reinvigorate how the housing business can deal with tenant complaints and resolve problems in super quick time.

Community Engagement 

Every organisation has a number of business practices to contend with. Major housing organisations that build properties need to engage with the community on a number of fronts. For example, it may need to deal with complaints from existing residents in a local area or facilitate communication between tenants, housing associations, and local communities.

AI tools need to work with customer engagement specialists to deal with the influx of queries but also promote themselves as competitive organisations. There are AI platforms to create videos, content, and imagery. These can help to improve customer service, while streamlining the entire process behind the scenes.

Regulatory Compliance

AI is an amazing tool and when it's harnessed properly it can help organisations to remain compliant with relevant laws and regulations. Regulatory compliance is an essential part of any housing organisation to ensure that it is aware of new requirements and can adjust its processes. Regulatory monitoring and various approaches to analysis such as using predictive analytics to analyse historical data and identify trends can keep a housing association business on its feet.

It can also provide real-time insights into compliance metrics and identify any deviations from the norm while also ensuring that any compliance documentation is up-to-date, organised and accessible. AI is critical in automating tasks and providing insights, and housing associations need to comply with any changes in the regulatory process to avoid undue punishment.

Providing Personalised Services

One of the most important areas of customer service in the modern day is to provide a service that is individual to the customer, not just the customer demographic. AI can be an invaluable tool for offering personalised services to tenants.

AI that complies with customer relationships and management tools can be a force for major customer engagement. From the perspective of any tenant or customer in the housing association, they can be offered personal services based on their behaviour, such as suggesting relevant local services or amenities.

The Plethora of Productivity Tools

While many people are only becoming aware of AI through tools like ChatGPT, there are so many areas that AI covers. AI is actually nothing new and is a daily part of our lives. We are using AI all of the time, and so many tools are being driven by artificial intelligence. Many housing organisations can benefit by integrating AI into their current practices to work more efficiently. There are numerous AI programs we can use:

• Grammarly, an AI-powered writing assistant to check grammar and spelling.
• Copy.ai, a copywriting tool that can generate marketing copy to help businesses keep up with the content mill aspect of promotion.
• Tom’s AI, which can help create presentations.
• Avaya Call Reporting, which provides call analysis for customers who contact businesses by phone.
• Click4Assistance, which is a tool that can help businesses learn how to put live chat on website pages and automate answers to common questions, reducing the need for human customer service representatives. In fact, Click4Assistance has a housing chatbot that can assist with a number of different inquiries relating to application forms, rent, and so much more.

If there is one part of AI that most people can use to improve their lives, it is in terms of productivity because of the wide variety of tools on offer but also the unlimited solutions AI can bring.

What Housing Associations Must Consider When Using AI

There is potential for a lot to go right, but there have been a number of examples of AI programs making factual errors. While ChatGPT creator OpenAI has put stops in place to prevent ChatGPT from creating hateful content, there are ways to prompt the program to express itself hatefully. AI systems are an invaluable tool, but users need to be aware of a number of risks, especially in terms of sensitive information that passes through housing associations. AI systems collect and use personal information and this can raise concerns relating to GDPR and data protection laws.

There are a number of issues that are present within social housing such as a lack of investment, a shortage of affordable housing, isolation, inequality and so much more. Housing associations can utilise AI in a number of different ways and it has the potential to transform the housing sector. It can be a more efficient and effective entity, but the users of AI need to ensure that AI is used ethically.

AI is a force for change in the modern world, but it's essential to consider any potential risks and balance this accordingly with the desired results, especially in the housing sector.