The award will enable Cairn Housing Group to increase the range of channels customers can use to contact the Cairn Connect customer service team. These will include seamless user interfaces for conversational text messaging, social media enquiries, web assistants and enhanced connectivity to existing webchat and self-service systems.

The latest grant from the Scottish Procurement Alliance’s Community Benefits Fund complements an earlier award for a project that aimed to increase digital connectivity in sheltered and retirement housing, with a pilot project offering low-cost Wi-Fi, information screens and kiosks for accessing online services.

Cairn Housing Group, a partnership between Cairn Housing Association, ANCHO and Cairn Living, has invested in technology to respond to the changing needs of customers. Systems for managing customer contact, digital workflows and an online self-service portal have all been rebuilt in-house. A Digital Futures Strategy is now supported by fully bespoke solutions to meet the challenge of providing modern services to customers in rural and urban areas across Scotland.

Sarah Parker, project manager at Cairn Housing Association, said: “The Scottish Procurement Alliance has been an enthusiastic partner for our digital journey, and this award from the Community Benefits Fund will allow us to develop innovative solutions that allow customers to use their favourite messaging channels, while being fully integrated with our systems. We have an ambitious strategy for digital transformation and this award allows us to focus on making the customer experience simple, intuitive, and accessible.”

Kate Christie, senior business development officer at Lintel Trust, which manages the Community Benefit Fund, added: “Cairn Housing Group has made great progress in their adoption of digital technology to transform the way they interact with tenants. The fact that tenants will be able to use a full range of devices to access services should encourage more people to go digital. Cairn are constantly striving to meet the needs of a wide range of tenants spread over Scotland. We are delighted that funding from the SPA Community Benefit Fund has been used to help Cairn Housing Group develop great, user friendly digital tools, making life easier for both tenants and staff.”

Don Jamieson, chair of Cairn Housing Association, said: “This funding from the Scottish Procurement Alliance is timely with the challenges of Covid-19 highlighting the need to adapt to new ways of working that will better meet the needs of customers in a post-lockdown world. Cairn Housing Group was some way down this road already and we are in a great place to meet the difficulties our sector faces. Our Digital Futures Strategy is full of innovative ideas and we are looking forward to offering these additional online services to our customers.”