Abri redesigns housing support with data-driven, customer-first communication

Overview: One of the UK’s largest housing associations, Abri has embraced rapid business growth while boosting contact centre performance, customer experience, and employee satisfaction. With 8x8 as its strategic CX platform partner, Abri continues to reimagine how it communicates with over 113,000 tenants—placing their voices at the heart of service delivery.

“We wanted a cloud solution that was dependable and with minimum support requirements. That’s since proven to be the case with 8x8.”

Peter Stephens

Associate Director of Technology, Abri

Putting homeowners and tenants firstlink to this section

Abri touches the lives of more than 113,000 customers by providing warm, safe, and affordable homes. With over 58,000 properties across southern England, Abri’s mission goes far beyond housing—it’s about empowering communities and delivering support that really matters.

The contact centre is the front door to that support, handling around 85% of all interactions.

Tom Ramadan, Director of Customer Experience, leads this fast-paced environment where dedicated teams look after customers, many of whom live in remote rural areas or may be in vulnerable situations.

“I’m lucky because I get to see the difference our work makes in real time,” says Tom. “We see it in minutes and hours—not months. That’s incredibly rewarding. But it also means we have to get that first contact right every time, because customers judge us based on their last experience.”

Balancing partnerships with continuity of servicelink to this section

But for a long time, their outdated communications system was unreliable, and the lack of stability meant staff members were spending too much time troubleshooting and not enough time helping customers. Morale suffered, and Abri’s ambition for sector-leading customer experience wasn’t being delivered. To move the service closer towards its ambitions and prepare for the future, Abri needed a platform that was reliable, easy to manage, and flexible enough to grow with them. They found it with 8x8.

Looking to escape the cost and burden of managing on-premises systems, Abri decided to standardise on the 8x8 integrated platform—including 8x8 Work, 8x8 Contact Center, and 8x8 Voice for Microsoft Teams.

“We wanted a cloud solution that was dependable and with minimum support requirements,” recalls Peter Stephens, Associate Director of Technology. “That’s since proven to be the case with 8x8.”

Five years on, Abri has undergone significant change, with partner companies Octavia and Silva Homes joining the Group.

“We’ve boosted performance since onboarding Octavia and Silva Homes and bringing them onto the 8x8 platform. Call answer rates have jumped from 72% to 92% and average wait times declined by 50%. Similarly, customer satisfaction has risen from 60% to 92%.”

Tom Ramadan

Director of Customer Experience, Abri

“The recent mergers increased complexity and contact volume,” adds Peter. “Thankfully, integrating those operations into 8x8 was quick and seamless—not something we had to worry about.”

Delivering better CX with greater flexibility and integrationslink to this section

Each month, 100 agents handle around 50,000 interactions—from the office and remotely. Their experience is enhanced through several integrations that streamline workflows and improve CX.

Instead of toggling between systems, agents work in a unified interface. The Microsoft Teams integration allows them to manage calls and meetings in one space. Meanwhile, an integration with Open Housing (the Group’s housing management system) provides screen pops with customer data, helping agents identify the reason for the call and guide conversations.

“The Open Housing integration has added great benefits,” notes Tom. “It’s cut down on data entry and screen jumps. Also, our agents start conversations on the front foot and don’t have to keep asking customers to repeat information we already have.”

Similarly, managers and supervisors can leverage 8x8 queue history and agent data together with the Verint Workforce Management integration, thereby ensuring the right people with the right skills are always in the right place at the right time—with minimum admin effort.

Using data and AI to drive proactive servicelink to this section

With high call volumes, Abri is making significantly better use of data. By using speech and text analytics to address high-priority issues faster, or by using sentiment analysis to uncover drivers of customer dissatisfaction, teams can work proactively to resolve issues before they escalate

“There's so much available out of the box with 8x8,” says Tom. “We’ve had good feedback on the post-call summarisation tool, live voice summaries, which is a great time saver. As a result, our team managers and supervisors work more efficiently, jumping on things quickly and getting a good overview of what's happening during interactions.”

Compared to previous manual quality assurance processes, AI-support tools are capturing more actionable insights while reducing cognitive load for agents—allowing them to apply emotional intelligence and focus on the things that really matter when dealing with vulnerable residents in the community.

Regulation is another area where analytics will play a significant role. Under new UK legislation, Awaab's Law requires social housing landlords to fix serious hazards, such as damp and mould, within strict, legally mandated timeframes. “We’ve grown our team and created a robust approach, supported by content analytics to help us target quality assessments much more effectively,” says Tom.

Seeing issues through the eyes of tenantslink to this section

Around half of all calls received by Abri are property repair related. Now, with 8x8 video elevation, agents can visually assess the repair requirement via a video call, which is activated by the customer using a simple link in a text message. For example, they can walk the customer through a simple boiler reset, reducing the need for a repair and providing an instant fix.”

“Early results are encouraging,” adds Tom. “Video elevation has improved the way we triage—supporting our first-time fix rates and positively impacting the customer experience. Our next step is to extend video elevation to our housing officers, helping them make better use of their time during routine property inspections, while also offering more flexibility to our customers.”

Empowering teams, improving outcomeslink to this section

Since moving to 8x8, Abri has seen measurable improvements in responsiveness and efficiency. Managers and supervisors are saving time through prebuilt reporting tools, while teams are able to focus more on delivering value to customers. Staff feedback has been positive, with Abri reporting a 37% increase in its annual contact centre employee satisfaction score since implementing 8x8.

“Video elevation has improved the way we triage—supporting our first-time fix rates and positively impacting the customer experience. Our next step is to extend video elevation to our housing officers, helping them make better use of their time during routine property inspections, while also offering more flexibility to our customers.”

Tom Ramadan

Director of Customer Experience, Abri

“Centralised administration with intuitive user interfaces makes 8x8 very easy to set-up and manage,” says Peter. “There are no caveats around how new people are set up, and how new contact centres and call queues are delivered. The turnaround time for delivery and for configuration has been pretty quick, and actions that previously needed IT resources can now be handled easily by the call centre managers.”

By investing in training and empowering employees with 8x8 technology, Abri continues to reshape the delivery of housing services to the benefit of its homeowners and tenants. More customer queries are now being resolved at the first point of contact, creating capacity to resolve complex inquiries.

“We’ve boosted performance since onboarding Octavia and Silva Homes and bringing them onto the 8x8 platform,” concludes Tom. “Call answer rates jumped from 72% to 92% and average wait times declined by 50%. Similarly, customer satisfaction has risen from 60% to 92%.”