Background
Jigsaw Homes Group are one of the largest housing providers in England, managing over 37,500 homes across the North-West and East Midlands. Formed from the merger of New Charter Housing Group and Adactus Housing Group in 2018, Jigsaw is dedicated to providing affordable, quality homes and supporting sustainable, thriving communities.
Their vision? For everyone to live successfully in a home they can afford.
Since 1997, allpay have been providing payment solutions to Jigsaw, collecting in excess of £110,000,000 through its Direct Debit service, Callpay Service, gateways and Over the Counter services
The challenge
Jigsaw, like many other UK housing associations, are constantly navigating rising operational costs and pressure to meet sustainability targets, all whilst maintaining the standards their tenants expect and rely on.
The team at Jigsaw knew they needed to identify areas where operational efficiency could be improved without compromising on service delivery.
“We are always looking for ways to improve systems, lower our carbon footprint and reduce costs.” said Claire McFarlane, Income Manager at Jigsaw Homes Group. “One of the areas I had been looking at is letter production and postage costs. As such, Email Notifications processed via the Direct Debit portal was something that I felt could mitigate some of those printing and postage costs”.
The opportunity
Jigsaw recognised that increasing tenant uptake of Direct Debit Email Notifications could help them:
- Lower operational costs related to printing and postage
- Reduce paper waste in line with sustainability targets
- Improve the speed and convenience of tenant communications
However, they felt that the existing Email Notifications option within allpay’s Direct Debit set-up journey wasn’t prominent enough to portal users for it to be utilised well.
Jigsaw raised this directly with their allpay Account Manager, suggesting a change to the portal that would help internal teams capture more email addresses and drive digital engagement with tenants.
The solution
In direct response to Jigsaw’s feedback, allpay implemented updates to the Direct Debit portal to make the ‘Contact Preferences’ option for Email Notifications clearer and more accessible to its users. The improved journey included:
- Clearer prompts within the set-up process to ask for correspondence preferences
- An enhanced emphasis on collecting email addresses
- A more user-friendly experience for internal teams encouraging email notification uptake
“These updates added extra steps to the Direct Debit set up process, which specifically asked about communication methods and prompted internal users to try and obtain email addresses and promote Email Notifications – good work!” – Claire McFarlane, Income Manager at Jigsaw Homes Group
To build further momentum, Jigsaw ran an internal competition to encourage uptake of the service, but with limited success. Recognising the opportunity to go further, the team at allpay offered to run a tailored customer awareness campaign on Jigsaw’s behalf, promoting the switch to Direct Debit Email Notifications.
The result
The customer awareness campaign delivered impressive and measurable results. A total of 4,499 Jigsaw tenants have now switched to Direct Debit Email Notifications via allpay. What’s more, this switch has helped Jigsaw:
- Save £5,635 per print run in reduced production and postage costs
- Prevent 28.11kg of A4 paper waste each run
The customer awareness campaign was delivered at no additional cost to Jigsaw, as part of our ongoing commitment to supporting our clients with proactive, value-driven success.
Claire McFarlane gave insight on the results for Jigsaw “Since moving onto the new Payments Hub, we have found allpay to be an organisation that is listening to its customer feedback and finding innovative ways to enhance and improve the systems.”
“We were delighted with the detailed stats that we received back from this. allpay helped to increase the number of verified emails by a further 44% after the campaign, adding even more value to Email Notifications as a product.”
Looking forward
Building on the strong and valued partnership between Jigsaw Homes Group and allpay, the two organisations will continue to collaborate closely, with allpay remaining attentive to Jigsaw’s evolving needs and supporting them with innovative, secure payment solutions.
This collaboration truly highlights the power of proactive thinking and the shared goal of providing a service that benefits and provides a lasting impact on the communities they serve.
As Jigsaw continues to grow and pursue its Be Zero strategy, allpay remains dedicated to supporting this journey by offering accessible payment and communication solutions that streamline collections and significantly reduce environmental impact. This approach not only improves operational efficiency but also drives positive change, making sustainability a shared priority within the partnership.
Luke Birch, Key Client Development Manager at allpay said “Working with Jigsaw on enhancing the uptake of Direct Debit Email Notifications has been a true collaboration. By listening to their needs and acting on their feedback around improvements to the portal journey, we’ve helped support their goals around efficiency, sustainability, and improving tenant communications. We’re proud of what’s been achieved so far and look forward to continuing our work together to deliver even greater value.”
