Just Ask was founded in 1972 and has been working with social housing associations across the UK for the last 15 years. It organises cleaning and ground maintenance, as well as activities such as bulk waste collection. “Nothing is too much trouble – if housing associations need something they can Just Ask,” Simpson explained.

Despite its national footprint, the company has preserved its unique culture of caring for the community. In 2017, Bridges Fund Management recognised the company’s potential to improve the lives of people living in social housing and invested £9 million to drive growth. 

Step one was to elevate digital field services.

“We had a custom app that our mobile team used to take photos and log unfinished jobs. It was great for making sure things were done properly, but it didn’t help drive operational efficiency,” said Simpson. 

After evaluating 15 solutions on the market, Just Ask’s partner, Asperii, introduced them to lucky number 16 – Salesforce. “We realised we could run our whole business from one platform, not just field service,” added Simpson. “We had a demonstration of Salesforce Field Service and were amazed that tasks that took three minutes in our app could be done in a third of the time – which is a significant time saving of more than 230 man-hours across 7,000 jobs a day.”

Simpson – who describes himself as ‘the least technical guy in tech ever’ – took ownership of the implementation, using Trailhead to upskill and learn about all things Salesforce.

“I’m a big fan of Trailhead. I spent 30 minutes a day taking training modules for those first six months, and now dedicate an hour a week to brush up my skills. It played a huge role in our journey, along with the Salesforce community, who were quick to respond to any queries I posted,” he revealed.

Training included learning soft skills around change management to empower front-line staff to use the platform. To make sure the Field Service app was user friendly for people less familiar with workplace technology, the team worked with the field operatives who would ultimately be using the new solution. This was critical to get buy-in and drive adoption, and staff enjoyed seeing their suggestions implemented, such as being able to upload photos and notes to the app.

Three months after launching a solution based on automated scheduling, Simpson made a discovery that transformed employee efficiency. He realised that the optimisation capabilities provided 22% more time to spend on site, which meant the company could manage the same number of properties with 17% less resources.

This saving not only covered the company’s investment in Salesforce, it allowed the team to introduce the ’10-minute rule’. When on site, staff can spend a percentage of their time helping residents with tasks such as carrying shopping to their door. And knowing someone is actively checking on their welfare has seen resident satisfaction soar.

Today, there are 237 mobile units carrying out 500,000 work orders per year, and they all use Salesforce to manage their day. In fact, everyone at Just Ask touches Salesforce, from client services, admin, and HR to health and safety, IT, third party contractors, and fleet managers.

Field staff can log that they’ve arrived at a destination, check off maintenance tasks as they complete them, capture photos, and flag anything unusual such as a broken lock or bulk waste that needs collecting. They use the live feed to communicate and collaborate with the rest of the team on a platform as intuitive as social media.

“The app empowers our teams to be more autonomous and to take charge of their professional growth. Data captured in Salesforce gives us greater transparency and makes it easier for managers to build their own reports and get a better understanding of what’s happening on site,” explained Simpson.

Field Service also supports fleet management. Previously, Just Ask tracked its fleet in a nine-page spreadsheet, with tabs for lists of drivers and licence checks, for example.

After learning about data and objects on Trailhead, Simpson realised he could translate this spreadsheet into Salesforce, migrate the contacts, and combine it with Field Service functionality to run fleet management on one platform.

Another team benefitting from Salesforce is the health and safety department. “Photos captured during site visits give us an accurate audit trail. We use them for vehicle checks and risk assessments before starting a job,” Simpson explained. “They also provide evidence that we can use to reduce the number of fraudulent claims. If someone claims they slipped on a wet floor for example, we can check whether the floor had been cleaned at that time and whether there was a warning sign in place.”

Eliminating fraud has reduced the number of successful claims to 11%, amounting to an 89% saving in pay outs/reduction in the year to date.

Just Ask is in the business of making life better for the community, and that includes its subcontractors and the housing associations it works for.

To help subcontractors work more efficiently, they use the same Field Service app to schedule appointments, optimise route planning, and automate manual tasks. Teams carry out tasks such as bulk waste collection and submit reports directly to Salesforce to give Just Ask visibility that tasks have been completed.

Meanwhile, housing association owners can self-serve via a dedicated portal to view and manage their portfolio – which can include any number of sites and buildings. From a central dashboard, they can search for a particular block and view its service history for the last three years. If they want more information on any job or to view photos, they can find what they need in a matter of minutes.

“The customer community is built on Experience Cloud and gives housing associations absolute clarity on the work we carry out for them. They can also raise cases or schedule work orders that we handle in Service Cloud, and will receive an alert when the status of their case changes,” explained Simpson. “Customers absolutely love it. We deal with 67 of the largest housing associations in the country, and it’s a real differentiator for us. Our Net Promoter Score for customer satisfaction is 44.”

And as this was all previously a manual process, it’s no surprise that customers are happier. Before Service Cloud, raising a case meant someone would need to physically visit the site involved, check paperwork mounted on the wall to find out when a job was completed and by whom, and manually look for any supporting emails or documents.

With Salesforce, customers can not only self-serve to get fast access to comprehensive records, a single Just Ask account manager can handle 300 operatives, compared to a team of three managing 26 operatives between them – amounting to a 380% increase per person.

At Just Ask, ‘Better Places, Better Lives’ starts at home. Automation is making staff more productive, more efficient, and more satisfied in their jobs. And happier staff create better home environments for residents. With insights at its fingertips, Just Ask can recognise the impact that its valuable team has on the bottom line and make sure they’re rewarded.

“Without Salesforce data, we wouldn’t have been able to celebrate individual success. Now we reward our hardest workers every month, and the best performers go out for a meal with senior management once a quarter,” said Simpson.

Powerful analytics also help the company respond quickly to requests for data from its parent company. Whatever the ask, insights are available in just a few clicks. And the unique culture of putting people first and getting outstanding results is spreading to more communities across Britain as business booms at Just Ask.