‘We need to do better’ – Karen Heaney, Platform Director at Legal & General Affordable Homes, discusses how technology can cut costs and deliver customer service excellence for housing providers

Having worked in the housing industry for over 37 years, Karen Heaney is no stranger to the challenges the sector faces. 

“I think one of the biggest challenges has been that it has taken far too long for housing providers to understand that data and tech are not the enemy and are in fact the solution. I think we’d all agree that the customer is central to everything and essentially they just want a solution and service execution. Technology can do this and with repairs and maintenance alone clocking up 62% of Global Accounts investment which in total adds up to £5.5bn, we simply needed a solution that did more for less.”

How did you approach facing these challenges in your role at Legal & General Affordable Homes (LGAH)?

“We are well aware of the problems the sector has faced over many years and have considered solutions through the lens of the customer and through efficiency gain. This has enabled us to develop a platform that gives us complete visibility of the live asset. From just-signed property deals, to a clear view of the development pipeline, from onboarding of new customers, to the specific building components being serviced or replaced in precisely which homes and because of what issues.

“We’ve created a solution that’s completely customer focussed, but gives us the data we need. It’s taken us three years to build it with a range of technology partners including AI partner askporter, but now our customers can log any issues on their phone, on the go, without needing to dig out model numbers for the engineers.

“Property Managers can onboard new customers in less than 48 hours instead of two weeks. This is huge for us and by letting cloud-based technology and AI do the heavy lifting, we’re taking the burden off property managers, the customers and providers. It also means as a provider, we’re there for our customers 24/7, on the device of choice, at the tap of a button. It really has enabled us to futureproof and redesign the end to end experience for the customer.”

What capabilities does your platform provide? 

“I have been ruthless about the amount of asset management data we capture at a granular level as I know how powerful this is for the business. Because we had the opportunity to start from scratch, I wanted to create an end to end property stack, not chatbot hell.

“Now using our end-to-end property management platform, which we’ve called Brolly, our management teams now have full visibility into our operations. By leveraging advanced technology like askporter as part of Brolly, we automate much of the heavy lifting for the customer. For all current and future assets, anyone in the business can report against a huge variety of metrics at the click of a button. The platform holds granular information about each LGAH home – from the model and age of appliances to the number and type of windows and doors at each property. So far, it has more than 263,000 pieces of information about the assets in each home – over 48 per home. This level of detail enables us to predict when an individual boiler might need servicing or replacing and how much it will cost, rather than a blanket approach to replacing all boilers – helping LGAH predict the performance of assets and maximising value for money.

“Measuring impact is huge for us too and our platform and complementary technology, such as askporter helps us to articulate and measure the impact our homes are having on the lives of residents and, by extension, the communities they live in. This depth of data and analysis brings the business’ ESG impact to life for investors and wider stakeholders.

“What I love about the platform is its agility when it comes to data. The platform makes light and quick work of data related tasks – be it filing statistical data returns for the regulator or collating customised information for investors. It eliminates the need for a dedicated team to fetch information from multiple systems while boosting accuracy and cutting the margin of error. Because it has been built from scratch, if LGAH wants to enhance any aspect of Brolly, or build more capability to fulfil a new need, it can do so without delay or contract negotiations with a third party provider.”

What have been the results so far?

“We’re still in the process of migrating customers over, but we have over 3000 customers on the platform, so far so we’re getting a really good feel for the overall impact and we’re impressed. We set out to create a customer focussed solution that got the job done quicker for them and gave us an extremely clear, single view of the asset and that’s exactly what we’ve got.

“It allows us to give time back to the customer so they’re not waiting on a phone for hours at a time, getting increasingly frustrated and not being given a solution.

“The aim is for the customers to be able to carry out 99% of the interaction with their landlord through the platform without the need to interact with a person, unless they choose to. Once an issue has been flagged by the customer, we’re able to provide accurate technical details directly to the repair engineers ahead of their visit. In the future, we’ll also have the capability to automatically schedule engineer visits according to the availability provided by the customer.

“We also want real-time diagnosis and solution of issues. In some cases already, the combined power of Brolly and askporter helps make critical decisions to diagnose and solve queries in real time, with human involvement to help with explanations to customers who prefer to speak to someone. Boosted by AI, the service is intuitive and predictive and delivers a much smoother, customised, close-to-human expert service.

“Since launching the full platform in August 2023, we have set up 3125 accounts, and of these, 86% have logged into their account. In the same time period, 3,400 defects or repairs have been reported and resolved to satisfaction, 41 of which were potential insurance cases.

“We are immediately able to assess the areas of activity – doors, windows, power supply, boiler, water leak and because of the quality of our asset component data we are able to then triangulate back to root cause analysis.

“Obviously as we have migrated customers onto the platform, the volume and profile of activity has increased but we are seeing a high rate of diagnosis – 95% – a 5% failed diagnosis rate is far lower than the industry average and a 4.2 CSAT rating which we’re thrilled about.”

What advice would you give other providers looking to build their own customer focussed solution?

“I think the most important thing is working with a specialist you trust and are on the same page as you. You don’t want off the shelf solutions as no business is the same, so think big. Find a solution which works for you on your journey and find providers that will share your ethos, culture and vision, like askporter did for us.

“Design principles are of course also key. Bring every aspect of management on one system, whether you’re a registered provider or a management provider or a customer, you can use the same platform – Brolly – to do very different things. The system reflects updates from each stakeholder for others as needed.

“Another thing which really helped us was to look outside the housing sector for best in class.

Registered providers must look at how to deliver the best experience for customers. Trying to find solutions within existing systems risks hobbling efforts to deliver truly transformational solutions.

“Personally I think the biggest learning has been that rather than looking at existing technology systems and trying to fit them to deliver your vision, start with a vision. Think big, imagine the best possible scenario and then go about finding or in LGAH’s case, building that technology from scratch to fulfil that vision.

What’s next for LGAH?

You may have seen recently from the housing press and social media that the recent launch of the L&G Affordable Housing Fund is at the centre of L&G’s commitment to delivering affordable housing across England, with assets seeded from L&G’s Affordable Homes business. The fund was launched in 2024 with a £125 million investment from Local Government Pension Scheme, ACCESS, and has since grown to £510 million following further investment, including £120 million from the Greater Manchester Pension Fund and more recently £100m from London CIV.

Our intention is to continue to work with partners and developers in securing new development opportunities, but also to consider opportunities to work with the wider sector to unlock capital in the marketplace through stock acquisitions.

This creates a wide range of new opportunities and challenges for us as we consider how our technology flows can be modified to consider the needs to existing assets – stock condition surveys, data migration and the volume of activity which will flow through and it’s something we’ll be speaking with askporter on to see how we can leverage our learnings and the power of their technology into legacy stock.

For more information about Legal & General Affordable Homes or their partnership with askporter watch the case study.