Agentic AI is poised to revolutionise the way housing providers care for their residents, explains Kay Aston, director of housing solutions at NEC Housing.

Imagine a situation where a resident contacts their housing officer to ask what the timeline is for fixing an ongoing damp and mould issue, reports an overdue boiler repair, and chases up their request for information on benefits entitlement.

These are clearly signs of a resident in need of support. But if the housing officer has to search for tenancy history, repairs information and vulnerability data in three different places it causes hold-ups.

All too quickly, residents’ requests turn into complaints, and housing staff become frustrated that they can’t deliver support more quickly.

The housing sector is increasingly using AI to pull together data from different sources to direct help to where it’s needed. But the next generation of agentic AI could help identify tenants in need of support before they even ask for it, reducing the rate of complaints and improving the experience for residents.

What is agentic AI?

While generative AI, such as ChatGPT or Microsoft Copilot can generate text, summarise documents and answer questions, it generally responds to a single prompt or series of prompts. Agentic AI goes several steps further. It can plan, decide on a course of action within agreed rules, analyse information from multiple software systems all at once and complete a sequence of tasks with minimal human intervention.

If you think of AI as your intelligent assistant who can answer questions at speed, then agentic AI is your highly capable digital colleague who can manage an entire workflow while keeping everyone informed.

Identify issues before they become complaints

Agentic AI can give housing providers a much richer understanding of their residents by carrying out a series of operations in a proactive and autonomous way, pretty much as a human would but with the ability to analyse vast quantities of data in a fraction of the time.

A housing officer could give the AI agent a clear end goal, such as, ‘Identify all the elderly or vulnerable residents we need to prioritise for early outreach to help them stay in their own homes for as long as possible.’

The AI agent would then pull together relevant insight about every vulnerable resident, so the housing team could see that Mrs Smith has reported three repairs in six months, including a request for fitting grab rails, and the latest inspection of her boiler is overdue.

Take steps to deliver swift support

Having identified residents in need of support, agentic AI can decide which actions need to happen and in what priority order, carry out those actions and monitor whether they have been completed. Your digital colleague will also know when a situation needs to be escalated to a human.

For example, the agent can say: ‘I’ve booked the repairs and inspection, prioritised the grab rail fitting and alerted the housing officer because this now meets the threshold for early intervention.’

The AI agent could then draft a series of personalised communications to the resident in question, using branding and messaging directly from the housing provider’s guidelines, and book follow-up visits for housing officers after the work is completed.

The revolutionary aspect of agentic AI is that it can perform all these steps automatically, leaving housing staff to make the decisions that require human empathy and judgement.

Prepare your data

Many organisations think that to make progress they need to invest in new AI tools. However, agentic AI is only as effective as the information it can access.

Fortunately, most housing providers have plenty of structured data such as property records and maintenance logs, as well as unstructured information including meeting notes and resident feedback forms that could provide insight. Agentic AI is adept at analysing all of this.

To make the most of agentic AI, housing providers need data which is integrated, accurate and from a trusted source, whether it’s structured or unstructured.

The technology can link all the relevant details in real time to anticipate issues, follow workflows and prioritise interventions, all of which frees human staff to make sure residents are safe and happy in their homes.

Prepare your people

It’s important to prepare housing staff for the changes agentic AI can bring too. When staff can see where AI agents can add value, they gain confidence in the technology so they can focus on work that requires human decision-making.

If AI tools are easy for staff to use, working alongside AI agents will quickly become second nature.

A housing officer will be able to ask an AI agent questions like, “Which issues are affecting residents’ lives and how can I improve their day-to-day living conditions?’ or ‘What are the best ways to improve resident satisfaction?’ The AI agent will draw from live data across repairs, complaints and tenancies to get clear answers instantly.

By taking full advantage of agentic AI, housing providers can anticipate residents’ needs before they turn into complaints, making every household feel heard, understood and supported.