Places for People is the UK’s leading social enterprise that aims to change lives by creating and supporting thriving communities.
Energy voucher scheme
Made up of complementary companies that are market leaders in placemaking, regeneration and development, investment management, property management and leisure. Working together, these companies have the expertise and reach to create and manage entire communities, providing homes, services support and infrastructure that enable their customers and communities to thrive.
To date, they own or manage more than 230,000 properties that are homes to around 500,000 customers right across the UK. Committed to supporting their customers and the communities where they operate, Places for People invested £133.1M into their existing homes during FY 21/22 and for FY 23/24 they are spending £5.2M on social impact activities.
The business needed to provide a more streamlined and direct way to support their customers during a time when the cost of living created financial hardship for many. In addition, the business wanted to give its teams the necessary tools to deal with these issues faster and more efficiently.
Over the colder months, customers were beginning to struggle to afford the increasing costs to power their homes and some were falling into energy arrears. As Places for People are committed to supporting the health and well-being of their customers, they wanted to let their Customers know that this support was available.
However, getting support to these customers can sometimes be slow due to the volume of requests for assistance. As demand for customer support increased, they needed a way to help keep support services, (mainly financial) available for all customers and to ensure the necessary assistance was given to those who needed it most.
Following initial meetings and platform demonstrations with Evouchers, Places for People found a new approach for issuing vouchers to their customers efficiently and cost-effectively.
As Innovation Project Officer, James Steven says: ”Evouchers provides a centralised platform giving us complete visibility of how vouchers are distributed and used, facilitating better control and organisation of our distributed vouchers, and what they are being redeemed for. The Evouchers system allows us to quickly send money for energy bills to those identified as in need of support which can be redeemed in a range of ways. This helped us reduce the time our customers are waiting for their vouchers and potentially without sufficient energy credits to power their homes. The service worked well by streamlining our vouchering approach and has been successful for what it was introduced for.”
The Evoucher platform has enabled Places for People to achieve a more sustainable approach to dealing with financial support for their customers, since using the platform they have issued over 5,000 vouchers to 127 individuals and families in their communities. Due to the simplicity of the platform, their teams can share the workload with colleagues around the business to help support customers, response times have been quicker, and therefore an improved overall customer experience. With Evouchers they have been able to get support out in a much faster way to help customers power their homes and reduce the risk of adverse health impacts of not heating the property.
Places for People are helping to build resilient, sustainable communities for their customers to thrive in, having additional tools such as Evouchers in place supports their business moving forward, by simplifying their management of vouchers and supporting their customer’s journey.
