The remote, digital services trend of the pandemic has helped drive 90% growth for Voicescape and led to nine new hires at the public services technology provider.
New demand from local authorities nationwide to enhance the digitisation of services has seen Voicescape grow beyond its social housing heartland to support more councils with compliance, collections, resident feedback and wellbeing requirements.
Expanding services beyond the social housing sector has seen Voicescape create nine new jobs at its Manchester headquarters including two management hires in its customer success team, along with the appointment of a new business development manager and a new account manager. Voicescape has also grown its R&D team with the appointment of a new support engineer and an IT apprentice under the Government’s Kickstart scheme.
As a result, company turnover has increased by 90% in the first half of its financial year, compared to the same period in 2019, and is recruiting for a further two roles across the company.
John Doyle, founder and CEO of Voicescape, comments: “Local authorities have been increasingly embracing digital transformation – a trend that has been accelerated by the impact of the pandemic. This is changing approaches to core operational ways of working and how councils connect with the public and is a sign of long-term evolution in service provision.
“We’ve innovated and diversified our range of services, building on best-practice honed over more than a decade of working in partnership with housing associations to provide local authorities with new ways to work efficiently that also help improve public services and satisfaction.
“Our work has proven that processes can be digitised and automated, allowing valuable resources to be redeployed to other service areas to enrich the ‘human touch’ and create meaningful connections that members of the public really value.”
The past year has seen Voicescape work with local authorities to address the approach to collecting council tax arrears. Using its Collections service – an automated outbound telephone call and management system – councils are able to recover council tax arrears and increase resident engagement with a proactive and positive approach. The automated solution also frees-up resource within teams so it can be allocated to better supporting individuals that may need extra help with repayments, without the need for punitive and costly enforcement action.
John Doyle concludes: “We’ve expanded the team and will continue to make new hires to meet growing demand and to uphold and exceed the high levels of service our housing association clients know us for. There’s a significant Government-led shift towards improving the standards of public and housing services, and we’ll continue to invest in expertise that delivers solutions for meeting changing compliance requirements and enhancing resident satisfaction.”
