Case Studies
ASB reporting & advice line
Pinnacle Connect contact centre agents are specialists in handling out of hours calls related to emergency maintenance and anti social behaviour within the social housing sector. We currently have 45 social housing clients, managing in the region of 350,000 properties on their behalf, nationwide. Over the last 16 years we have successfully created a number of dedicated ASB reporting lines as well as integrated ASB reporting into a number of existing repairs contracts.
This wealth of experience means that our staff are highly skilled in handling these types of calls. They are not generic call handlers, but trained ASB/repairs operators capable and competent at dealing with a myriad of anti social behaviour type calls.
At Pinnacle Connect we are committed to our staff and their development as we recognise that this determines the quality of service to our customer. Our staff retention is, therefore, excellent.
Our wider service offerings in housing management and ASB management lends itself perfectly to the direct experience our agents and managers have built up over our many years. We draw on this experience when advising on new services for existing and potential customers.
The bureau nature of our business demands that all staff handling calls must be capable to answer all types of calls from our customers. This ensures that capacity is never an issue as residents are not reliant on a handful of staff being available to know how to handle client’s calls.
Working with the community
A Pinnacle PSG managed estate established a dedicated ASB reporting team to patrol a number of blocks experiencing high incidence of such behaviour. Our agents acted as a single point of contact to coordinate these teams, providing residents with a hotline number to call. Calls were assessed against a script provided by the client. Once recorded on to our ASB management system, details were passed to the team by phone for them to witness an event and or provide support to a caller.
The teams operated at key times during weekdays and weekends. Outside of their operating hours callers were either referred by our agents to the client’s local community officers or their local Police stations.
Pinnacle Connect provides a dedicated ASB reporting and advice line for East Midlands Housing Association (EMHA), operating out of hours, weekends and bank holidays 365 days a year. EMHA calls are directed to a dedicated ASB reporting line and answered as EMHA ASB out of hour’s service.
Pinnacle Connects’ agents record all details on to our own ASB reporting management system. Residents reporting serious incidents have their details and brief description of the incident recorded, but are then advised to contact their local Police station.
Pinnacle Connect provide a dedicated Environmental Health Reporting and Advice Line operating out of hours, weekends and bank holidays 365 days a year. This service means that residents such as those living in Wellingborough in Northamptonshire and Hackney in East London can report any incident relating to environmental health, out of hours. This includes, but is not limited to, anti social behaviour, usually categorised as either; noise nuisance (monitoring council issued noise abatement orders), hate crimes, domestic violence, fly tipping, racially motivated or inflammatory and non racially motivated graffiti.
Pinnacle Connect Agents are asked to deal with calls in line with the client’s scripting, giving callers the necessary time to register their incident. We then create a transferable record that can be passed to the relevant officer, if required. In some cases reports of noise nuisance especially relating to licensed premises, must be passed immediately to a council enforcement officer who will attend the incident.
In all cases full details of the reported incidents are added to our ASB management system and emailed or faxed to our clients before 9am the following morning. In addition to this daily report, each client receives a monthly summary of all activity into the line and we would work with each client individually to tailor these reports to their specific needs.
Delivering on Commitments
Pinnacle Connect has a strong track record of reducing clients’ costs whilst improving the services they provide to their customers. Using a central contact centre to report cases of ASB or similar incidences will reduce the overhead within a clients’ local office, or at least relieve the strain on the current staff members’ workload. The added benefit to using Pinnacle Connect’s contact centre services is in the amount of information that can be supplied back to the client, such as the exact number and types of calls received.
All calls are recorded and can be used at a later stage if a specific case escalated into court action.
