Hostcomm | Remote Visual Assistance

Introduction

In an era where technological advancements redefine operational approaches, social housing associations in the United Kingdom are met with a revolutionary proposition: Remote Visual Assistance (RVA). Historically, repair and maintenance (R&M)services for social housing associations were often outsourced to third-party contractors to ensure repairs and maintenance were efficiently addressed. However, recent shifts towards insourcing are not only improving operational efficiency but also improved customer satisfaction. Direct Labour Organisations or DLOs provide the R&M services for the housing associations and whilst in-housing doesn’t reduce costs significantly it opens up the door to innovative assistance services such as RVA.

The Traditional Outsourcing Model: A Brief Overview

Outsourcing has been a prevalent model for numerous social housing associations. It presented a seemingly convenient solution to manage extensive portfolios of properties, ensuring that they are maintained, repaired, and compliant with safety regulations. However, outsourcing also brought about its share of challenges such as misaligned objectives, fluctuating service quality, and, at times, escalated costs due to economic inflation and intermediary management layers.

The Dawn of Remote Visual Assistance (RVA)

RVA technology is not just a technological tool; it's a strategy-altering innovation that provides the capabilities to fundamentally change how social housing associations manage and execute their maintenance services. Through real-time video streaming and augmented reality (AR), maintenance experts located remotely can visually guide on-site personnel or tenants through a range of repair and maintenance tasks.

Strategic Insourcing through RVA

Enhanced Expertise Utilisation: RVA facilitates the optimal utilisation of an in-house expert's knowledge by allowing them to remotely diagnose issues, guide on-site staff, and manage multiple repair jobs without physically being present at the locations.

Empowering Tenants: Through RVA, tenants can be guided to perform simple repairs themselves under professional supervision, reducing the need for sending a technician on-site for minor issues.

Real-time Training: On-site personnel can learn and enhance their skills in real-time while addressing maintenance issues, leveraging the visual guidance of expert technicians.

Financial Implications: A Deeper Dive

Reduced Operational Costs: Bringing services in-house can significantly diminish operational costs by eliminating the middleman, ensuring that finances are allocated optimally and by enabling RVA to be used to reduce travelling.

Efficient Resource Allocation: The ability to address multiple maintenance issues without the need for extensive travel minimises unnecessary expenditures and boosts the efficiency of skilled personnel.

Ensuring Quality and Consistency in Service Delivery

With RVA, social housing associations can maintain tighter control over service quality, ensuring consistency and adherence to organisational standards. The in-house teams, guided by their own expert colleagues, are more likely to align with the organisation’s benchmarks and tenant satisfaction metrics.

Data Analytics and Continuous Improvement

With RVA technology, a wealth of data regarding maintenance requests, response times, and repair durations can be collated. These invaluable data points serve as a foundation for continuous improvement, allowing associations to analyse, iterate, and optimise their in-house maintenance processes.

Navigating Challenges and Creating Sustainable Models

Although RVA introduces a transformative approach to managing maintenance services, it is pivotal to acknowledge and mitigate challenges, such as technology adoption, staff training, and ensuring reliable connectivity in all properties.

The Ripple Effect on Tenant Satisfaction and Community Building

The benefits of RVA transcends operational efficiency and cost-saving, echoing into enhanced tenant satisfaction and community building. Efficient, swift, and transparent maintenance service delivery fosters trust and reliability among tenants, reinforcing the association’s commitment to providing safe and well-maintained homes.

The Future of Social Housing Associations and RVA

RVA technology is not just a means to an end but a stepping stone towards creating more technologically advanced, efficient, and tenant-centric social housing models. As RVA technology continues to evolve, further opportunities for integration and optimisation will undoubtedly unfold.

Closing Thoughts

The marriage between technology and strategy, exemplified by the integration of RVA in social housing maintenance models, signifies a pivotal moment for associations across the UK. The ability to successfully transition from traditional outsourcing models to efficient, in-house operations mediated by technology heralds a new era, where service excellence and cost-efficiency are no longer mutually exclusive.

While RVA technology is a powerful tool, its successful integration relies heavily on strategic implementation, continuous evaluation, and an unwavering commitment to enhancing service delivery, tenant satisfaction, and community welfare. Social housing associations across the UK are not merely providers of shelter but pivotal entities that foster communities, and with RVA, they are empowered to do so with greater efficacy and financial stewardship.

Frequently asked questions

What is remote visual assistance (RVA)?

Remote visual assistance connects a host and remote person using a low-latency video session using their respective web browsers. The host can use guidance tools such as annotations and a live pointer to ensure there are no misunderstandings. The host is also able to capture a vast array of data from the remote smartphone without troubling the owner, such as image capture, OCR, video recordings, sound levels, distance measuring.

Why is remote visual assistance useful to Social Housing Associations?

RVA is very useful to social housing associations because it reduces travelling and speeds up the support response times. It can also help to perform high volumes of visual inspections to housing stock such as in the case of mould inspections. There are a variety of R&M tasks that can be completed remotely or that can be surveyed remotely ensuring the resulting visit is completed first time without re-visits.

How does RVA fit into social housing R&M systems?

RVA is a browser-based service which uses web APIs and can be integrated very easily with any other browser based service. In some case a browser extension can be added which adds RVA functionality to the existing housing management software user interface. The resulting session files can be added to the customer record using an API call. This means the service agent can perform remote assistance from a single user interface.

Is is easy to learn and implement?

Yes RVA is very intuitive because it is in many ways similar to an online meeting application such as Teams or Zoom. It is easy to implement because it is a software-as-a-service (SAAS) product, there is nothing to install and it usually does not present any firewall challenges for the IT department.