How social housing is benefitting from the AI boom

An increasing trend from the artificial intelligence (AI) boom is the use of AI-powered customer service bots for businesses and organisations. Housing associations, including West of Scotland and Kingdom, have already begun using AI bots to provide advice and information resources to tenants. AI bots can help streamline the work of housing associations by cutting out repetitive tasks, saving time and resources that may be better spent elsewhere.

What can AI do?

The possibilities of AI are seemingly endless. For housing associations, it can help facilitate most customer service-related issues and provide tenants with immediate answers to questions relating to:

• How to pay rent
• What to do about damp and mould issues
• Repairs processes
• Anti-social behaviour
• Housing association policies and services

AI may be used to forward more complex queries to the relevant human who will appropriately deal with the issue. Requests for repairs could also be made through an AI platform.

Benefits of AI for housing associations

Customer service representatives spend significant time answering important but repetitive tenant queries. An AI chatbot could streamline this, allowing them to focus on urgent or more complex issues beyond the scope of AI bots.

The existence of a 24/7 support service which responds to queries immediately could positively impact tenant satisfaction. Reduced waiting times for advice could give tenants peace of mind and increase trust in the housing association.

AI can be programmed to understand different languages, enabling AI bots to be used by a wide range of tenants. The AI bots can be extremely intelligent and do not necessarily require sophisticated prompts to produce sophisticated, all-encompassing responses. Housing associations accommodate a diverse range of tenants which necessitates an easy-to-navigate and accessible resource which can be used by anyone.

Challenges and considerations

To be data protection-conscious, housing associations should opt to use closed-platform AI models, i.e. where the code is kept private with no external interaction. This helps to avoid the risk of tenant’s personal information being misused or accessed without authorisation by AI. This is because AI ‘learns’ from its users to become more intelligent and will absorb any data it is fed. We assist housing associations in implementing AI technology to enhance support for their tenants and recognise the data protection aspects to the organisation.

Existing AI bots have been known to provide inaccurate information, for example, by inventing a non-existent piece of legislation to comfortably answer the user’s legal query. Therefore, the information provided by AI should be periodically fact-checked by the housing association to ensure that the bot remains a consistently reliable source for tenants.

Conclusion

AI is an intuitive invention of increasing popularity and relevance to all sectors. Housing associations could use the AI boom to their advantage by streamlining their workload and increasing tenant satisfaction. However, AI should be used responsibly. Maintaining accuracy and reliability will be crucial for the success of any AI-powered customer service bot for housing associations.