Immediate support with SMS staff communication

This blog post relates to Castleton, one of our previous brands. For more information please read the press release.

Stay Connected – your Internal Comms are more important now than ever

As Housing Associations across the country continue to battle the impact of Covid-19, a key priority is to ensure the Health & Safety of your staff and ensure Business Continuity measures kick in quickly so staff can continue to service tenants remotely.

We are all quickly adapting to this new way of working with major reliance on technology to do its job to help you do yours. During this transitional time, Castleton pledge to support and prioritise our customers who are in need of immediate and effective Internal Communication Measures – that will enable instant, digital contact with your staff when physical contact is not an option across your organisation.

Bulk SMS text messaging is a fast, effective and simple solution. We’ve taken measures to scale back our Communications Manager software to a core workflow that can be implemented quickly and get your internal comms up and running the very same day. We have tried to streamline the costs where possible – so you are only paying for the set-up, a fixed mobile number and the text messages that you use.

Our Stay Connected plan:

• Designed for your internal staff communications only
• No integrations to systems – simply import csv file of all your staff contacts
• 2 -way messaging, so staff can respond back to you
• Fully hosted by Castleton (at no charge)
• No software charge – just text message usage (starting from a 10,000 text bundle – as little as 8.9p per text to use within the 6 months on offer for this version)
• One day remote implementation cost
• Mobile number hosting cost

We ourselves are currently using this very same ‘stripped down’ version of Communications Manager to quickly and effectively communicate with our staff. Our own Business Continuity plan was fully tested and actioned over two working days, and our SMS technology solution played a key role in keeping our 200+ organisation fully informed. We now have our entire workforce fully home-based, equipped with laptops, secure remote access, communication applications and mobile phones to ensure we can connect using multiple digital methods. Our internal Castleton SMS platform is a major part of our own remote-working strategy.

What about effective communication with your tenants?

As a technology supplier dedicated to the sector, we are aware you are putting your emergency plans into place but at the same time, responding to immediate issues as critical repairs and gas safety checks.

We’ve been listening to some of our customers over the last few days “Biggest challenge is getting the messages out quickly”, “We need to keep our workforce mobile and ensure they are getting up to date information instantly”, “Tenant reassurance is key to our comms”, Maintaining channel comms is becoming a 24hr operation for us”. If you are working your way through these challenges right now, please pick up the phone to us.

The full version of this SMS platform can extend beyond your business-as-usual comms; use it for daily automated updates and reassurance to your tenants, let your most vulnerable tenants know what services are operating within the community that can directly support them.

For a 20 minute overview of what this SMS platform looks like, you can sign up to our on-demand Communication Manager webinars by contacting us.

Alternatively, contact your Account Manager who will get your internal Stay Connected plan kick-started for you.