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COMMUNITY HOUSING

Helping community housing support affordable housing and tenant experience

We help community housing organisations overcome key challenges using cloud telephony and remote visual support.

Helping community housing support affordable housing and tenant experience

Having worked closely with Home in Place, one of the largest non-government social housing providers in Australia, we’ve been able to gain insight into the challenges faced by the sector.

These challenges include:

  • Funding and financial sustainability
  • Regulatory compliance and governance
  • Property management and maintenance
  • Tenant management and support services
  • Market dynamics and housing affordability.

Together with leading global platforms and partnerships, we help Community Housing Providers (CHPs) address this through two services:

What is cloud telephony?

Cloud telephony is a communication system that operates through the Internet rather than traditional phone lines.

With cloud telephony, all voice data and services, such as call routing, voicemail, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), call forwarding and call analytics, are delivered over the Internet.

This allows you to handle your communication needs efficiently, without investing in costly infrastructure.

What is remote visual support?

Remote visual support uses advanced technologies to share live video and audio feeds between individuals or teams working remotely, allowing them to collaboratively diagnose, troubleshoot and solve problems in real time.

The role of cloud unified communications in community housing in Australia

Let’s take a closer look at the key challenges community housing providers in Australia commonly face and how unified cloud communications could help.

A remote technician using TechSee remote visual support

Enhancing communication with cloud telephony in the community housing sector

Tenant management and support services

Enhanced tenant engagement

UCaaS enables more effective and diverse ways to communicate with tenants, such as through video calls, instant messaging or integrated communication platforms.

This potentially contributes to a faster resolution, less waiting time and less frustration for the tenant.

Cloud telephony for improved services

UCaaS facilitates online support services, providing multiple channels, including counselling, legal advice and community engagement through various communication channels.

For Home in Place, leveraging their investment in technology to improve their digital service platforms and capabilities enabled them to drive greater customer service and digital inclusion. 

Remote visual assistance is a game changer for community housing property management

Community housing providers in Australia are making decisions on property management based on the limited information provided by phone calls. The cyclical management and responsive maintenance of property assets is one of the greatest challenges a community housing organisations can face. Remote visual support can help.

Facilitating remote property inspections and maintenance

Faster resolutions

Remote visual support enables maintenance staff to diagnose issues using visual assistance technology remotely. This can significantly reduce the need for on-site visits, leading to faster response times and lower travel costs.

Empowering residents through visual-based assistance

Through remote visual guidance, maintenance teams can accurately identify the nature of a problem before visiting, ensuring that they arrive with the right tools and parts. This improves first-time fix rates and reduces the need for repeat visits.

Tenant empowerment

Remote visual support can empower tenants to perform minor repairs or troubleshoot themselves with remote guidance from technicians. This saves time and resources and enhances tenant satisfaction and self-reliance.

A customer using the TechSee app for remote visual assistance
A plumber using the TechSee app for remote visual assistance

Training and support for maintenance staff

Documentation and compliance

Remote visual support can facilitate the documentation of issues and repairs, which is crucial for regulatory compliance and maintenance records. Visual evidence of problems and repairs can be easily captured and archived.

Accurately inspect completion of work and quality

When external contractors are involved, remote visual support can improve communication and coordination.

Contractors can fully understand the issues before they arrive, accurately account for their work and capture visual information on future repair requirements. This leads to more efficient repair and maintenance work and overall asset management.

Cyclical management benefits from remote visual support

The status of properties needing cyclical maintenance is often outdated. Gathering and storing this information so you can use it in budgeting and planning is a big challenge. Planned maintenance decisions are often based on assumptions, guesswork or past experience.

Gather on-site data to improve long-term asset cost predictions

The ideal state managers would like to achieve is predictive maintenance based on accurate information about the asset.

With a remote visual support service, you can leverage tradesmen who go onsite to gather data about the state and condition of the asset to improve long-term planning and budget allocation.

Capture the data in your property management system 

By integrating the remote visual service into your system, the data capture against the asset in the system record can be automated, streamlining the ability to report on the assets.

A customer using the TechSee app for remote visual assistance
"Our collaboration with Donnabrook, has been instrumental in the successful investigation and implementation of a new Unified Communications system. Donnabrook’s assistance in providing ongoing support and connections to valuable consultants and resources has significantly enhanced our systems, taking them beyond our expectations. We highly value their contributions and look forward to continued collaboration as we evolve our technology infrastructure.”
Kent Chalmers, Group Chief Technology Officer, Home in Place
Kent Chalmers
Group Chief Technology Officer, Home in Place

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