How Australia’s Evolve Housing is using AI to create profit for purpose

Amid a cost-of-living crisis and soaring interest rates, Australians are battling a rental housing crisis. Four out of five renters are experiencing financial stress, according to ABC News.

Evolve Housing, a not-for-profit (NFP) organization in Sydney, is providing social and affordable housing for more than 10,000 Aussies. Beyond critical housing solutions, Evolve is exploring using AI and natural language processing to improve social impact outcomes for disadvantaged people.

Evolve Chief Financial Officer Brett Manwaring is championing greater collaboration between the affordable housing sector and the tech industry. We chatted with him about how advanced technologies are helping reduce rental stress, break the cycle of domestic violence, and measure well-being.

How are affordable housing and well-being linked?

The Australian government is seeking robust data to inform future investments in social and affordable housing, and the well-being of tenants is a key metric. However, the NFP sector has not yet settled on what the base measurement for well-being should be.

I believe the work we’re doing at Evolve to index well-being could help government agencies unlock important insights into what makes communities thrive. Over the past two years, we’ve attempted to establish a stable measurement environment, identifying the right data and challenging how we might interpret and measure it.

We currently analyze a broad range of humanistic indicators, such as self-esteem, mental health, and an individual’s ability to manage their finances. We’re now using advanced analytics to map that data to our services.

For example, our annual survey might tell us a tenant’s quality of life has improved over the past year. So, the data can reveal whether it’s because of the type of property they’re living in or because they’re from a multicultural background and they’ve been provided secure housing in a diverse community—or perhaps that they have better access to public transportation and schools.

There’s no greater feeling than knowing that you’re improving someone’s sense of well-being.

How can better governance help future-proof finances?

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) is the entire purpose for NFPs—it’s why we exist. Frankly, NFPs are often better at understanding ESG than many private sector organizations are.

In addition to the government’s focus on measuring social well-being, our sector is responding to national changes for assessing environmental and social impact. While many organizations are robust in environmental and social principles, not many want to talk about the “G” in ESG. We’re engaging with institutional investors, and there’s a view across the sector of a lack of governance.

Evolve has invested heavily in its governance model, which was previously a critical barrier to securing funding. It’s the first box we have to tick. Technology has been vital to helping us achieve that and shift perceptions.

In simple terms, we’re using digital tools to validate our processes, data, and business model. The upshot is greater assurance on the robustness of our operations, decision-making, and ability to deliver.

How can broader collaboration support better housing?

There are more than 500 housing providers collectively trying to solve one of the country’s most pressing social challenges, but the majority simply don’t have the scale to invest in game-changing technologies such as workflow automation and AI.

Evolve is one of the country’s largest housing providers, but we’re competing with the private sector for talent. So, it’s essential we’re building digital skills and capabilities in our people—not simply handing things over to vendors to run for us.

I believe there’s a role for organizations like Evolve to collaborate with technology leaders for the advancement of the industry. Most housing organizations are grappling with multiple legacy applications and disconnected systems.

Front- and back-office teams are stuck in a never-ending cycle of follow-ups, chair-swiveling, and double-handling. When it takes 15 minutes and seven clicks to update a mobile number, the tenant and employee experience suffers.

We want our technology to make life not only easier, but also better for everyone. Using ServiceNow Customer Service Management and Field Service Management, we’re targeting 30% to 40% capacity uplift within our teams.

The new platform will give us end-to-end visibility of requests for vendors, contractors, and tenants. Whether someone is engaging with us via text, chat, email, or voice, it’s all happening on one connected platform.

In many cases, we’ve removed our frontline agents as a touch point for repairs or maintenance orders. Using the ServiceNow Field Service Management mobile app, technicians and tenants can communicate and resolve requests directly.

Working with partners like ServiceNow, we can create off-the-shelf products that are affordable for smaller housing associations. When digital solutions can deliver business outcomes that solve 80% of issues, everyone wins. It shouldn’t matter which housing provider a tenant is with—it’s about creating efficiency across the sector to deliver better outcomes for all Australians.

How are you using housing data to improve outcomes?

As in any customer-centric organization, data informs almost every decision we make.

Our development team is embracing technologies such as AI and machine learning to help us plan for the future. Evolve is working on affordable housing developments with a 10-year or more lead time. We rely on information from a range of sources to predict the changing demographic mix of an area, whether it’s the right location to develop, and the likelihood of access to schools and transportation.

This data informs whether our housing developments will meet the future needs of citizens and support our engagement with the government on delivering the right social outcomes.

AI has the potential to assist our frontline support teams as they wade through vast amounts of data in real time and pinpoint the insights that will make a meaningful difference to people’s lives.

Consider the cost of domestic violence to the government, our economy, hospitals, and courts. Predictive intelligence and natural language processing can help identify warning signs so that we can intervene early and connect people to support services. By recognizing verbal triggers, we can implement preventive steps that may stop the cycle.

The same applies to catching indicators of financial stress: Our team can jump in early and have a pre-emptive discussion or connect the tenant with the right help at that critical moment.

That’s really exciting to me—using all the available data not to put people in boxes, but to say, “If we see these common attributes, let’s find the right support, right now.”

What advice would you give other NFP leaders?

First, listen to your employees and understand their pain points, because that’s often what you’re asking them to do for your customers. Evolve frequently deals with people facing significant mental stress, so we need our frontline teams to feel capable and empowered—not frustrated or hamstrung by disconnected systems and processes.

Secondly, take an enterprise view. Many Australian organizations opt for unintegrated point solutions, but they only solve one piece of a larger problem.

What we’ve learned through our digital transformation is the value of efficiency for our customers, and that necessitates visibility from the front to the back office. If you don’t connect the back office, you may well have a positive interaction with customers, but it won’t improve how quickly you fix things or better meet their needs next time.

Of the 5,000 to 6,000 calls Evolve receives every month, we found 80% of conversations were occurring because technology wasn’t the main delivery system. Two-thirds of our incoming calls were follow-ups. Our analysis found the greatest efficiency gain is in using technology to prevent the need for follow-up.

Once you establish a deep understanding of your workflows, you can automate where it makes sense. The right technology can build greater levels of trust on both sides. Our employees are now able to focus their time on the things no digital solution can do: providing genuine care and empathy from one person to another.

Find out more about how ServiceNow helps organizations put AI to work for people.