The Resident Engagement Foundations Every Provider Can Build Now

At Sero, we know successful retrofit doesn’t begin with technical measures or scopes of work; it begins with people. Long before any home upgrade takes place, we need to build trust, spark curiosity, and create the space for real conversations.

But getting through the literal (and metaphorical) front door isn’t easy. Residents bring different priorities, pressures, and lived experiences, which means engagement can’t start with a single letter informing them of an upcoming home survey. True engagement is understanding their circumstances, recognising what the experience means for them, and communicating in a way that feels human, relatable, relevant and timely.

And yet, in a world where project timelines are often shaped by funding windows, procurement processes and supply chain mobilisation; resident engagement is too often squeezed in at the end, rushed, transactional, and leaving residents feeling like retrofit is something being done to them rather than with them.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. There is so much housing providers can do now, long before contracts, budgets, or installers are in place, to lay the foundations for meaningful engagement and successful retrofit journeys.

Our Customer Experience and Resident Engagement experts, Craig and Han, share three foundational steps they think are fundamental to a resident engagement strategy.

Foundation Number 1 – Map the Resident journey

If you want to know the whole story, you wouldn’t just read a few chapters.

Mapping your residents’ journey means thinking about the experience you want them to have from start to finish, and using that to build your engagement, communications and processes. It’s a chance to bring together everyone involved in retrofit and get them thinking about how a resident might feel throughout, and what needs to happen to create a positive experience.

This journey map becomes your blueprint. You can refine it, adapt it for different projects and continuously improve it as you learn.

Start by mapping out key touchpoints against project milestones and delivery dates, then overlay them with the right questions:

  • What do our residents care about? What are their worries and concerns? Use personas, survey findings, hold resident focus groups, utilise lived experience from previous projects, and most importantly, insights from frontline teams to truly walk in residents’ shoes.
  • Where are the key decision points? What information do residents need at each stage? What can you do when someone is questioning their involvement?
  • Who are your stakeholders? What role do they play? What training or information do they need to offer a positive experience and build trust?
  • Where are the pain points and bottlenecks? What consistently delays or disrupts the journey?
  • Where are the ‘moments that matter’? Those small interactions of reassurance that can turn uncertainty into confidence.

By understanding the journey in full, not just the technical steps, you build engagement that feels thoughtful, consistent and human.

Make it count: Internal buy-in is fundamental to the success of your project. This is a great opportunity for you to start your internal stakeholder engagement.  Ask your key stakeholders to join you in a workshop and map out the journey together. Get their experience and buy-in all at the same time!

 

Foundation Number 2 – Know your audience (because one size doesn’t fit all)

Residents aren’t a single group; they’re individuals with different lives, pressures and expectations. From financially stretched households to isolated or vulnerable residents, and everyone in between, truly understanding the makeup of your homes and communities helps you communicate better, engage with empathy, and build trust from the outset.

One of the most effective ways to do this is by creating customer personas. These aren’t stereotypes, they’re insight-driven profiles built using information from across your organisation combined with external data.

Consider the following dimensions:

Demographics: gender, age, household type, finances, education

Values & beliefs: political leanings, views on climate action, knowledge of retrofit technologies

Emotional needs: routines, vulnerabilities, trust levels, worries, lived experience of repairs, attachment to their home, whether they have pets or children, and behaviour change triggers.

This depth of understanding is invaluable. It helps you deliver the right message at the right time, which is absolutely crucial in retrofit.

For example:

  • A financially struggling household may respond best to messages about how energy efficiency can reduce their bills and make their home more affordable to run.
  • An isolated resident may need reassurance first: who will be coming into their home, how long the disruption will last, and what support is available before they’re ready to hear about the benefits.

When your messages meet residents where they are, engagement becomes far more meaningful.

Other benefits of strong personas include:

  • Spotting your early adopters, those who will say yes first, become champions, and help engage others.
  • Developing tailored key messages for training frontline teams and contractors to adapt their 1:1 conversations based on emotional cues and individual needs.
  • Shaping an objection handling strategy, helping you move residents from refusal to resistance, to genuine engagement.

Our top tip: Involve your customer, insights and marketing teams, they may already have personas, and if not, will most certainly have data you can use. Don’t forget your neighbourhood teams too, the conversations they have over a cup of tea or during a routine catch-up with residents will provide invaluable insight.

 

Foundation Number 3 – Educate before you Activate

Most resident engagement models follow a simple behavioural journey:

Awareness – Residents are learning about retrofit or climate change for the first time.  The Why!

Consideration – They start exploring what it means for them, their home and their daily life. The What and the How!

Decision – they feel informed, reassured and ready to act.

But in housing, we often flip this journey on its head. Because funding windows, procurement cycles and supply chain mobilisation are unpredictable, housing providers are understandably hesitant to communicate too early. There’s a fear of raising expectations that can’t be met, of talking about retrofit before there’s clarity on budgets, timelines or delivery partners.

The result?
When a project does get approval, providers often jump straight into the consideration stage, asking residents to think about assessments, installers, and home disruption, without ever building the all-important awareness first.

And without awareness, consideration quickly becomes confusion or mistrust. But here’s the opportunity: you can start building awareness now, whether you have a programme planned or not.

Awareness is about education, not delivery. It’s about helping residents understand:

  • What retrofit actually is
  • Why it matters for their home, their bills and their comfort
  • How climate change connects to their everyday lives
  • The positive impact improvements can bring
  • What futureproofing their home really means.

This early awareness work lays the emotional and cognitive foundation for everything that comes later. It reduces fear, builds familiarity, myth-busts the scaremongering they often read in the news, and removes the retrofit shock factor that so often derails engagement at the start of projects.

The best way to do this?

Work in collaboration with your internal teams and the community, from housing and maintenance to marketing and engagement.

Partner with schools, libraries and community hubs to run relaxed, informative sessions on climate change and simple energy-efficient habits.

Convert voids into show homes, where people can step inside, see technologies in action, and chat to someone over a cuppa about what it’s really like to live in an upgraded home.

Engage residents who are already benefitting from retrofit and turn their lived experience into powerful, trusted storytelling. Real voices and relatable stories to make retrofit feel relevant and achievable.

Power move: Advertise in your newsletters, on your website, social media channels and at local community events.  All these activities plant seeds of awareness early, build trust naturally, and create informed, curious residents who are far more prepared and positive when the time comes for formal engagement.

 

Our closing thoughts…

Retrofit may be complex, but meaningful resident engagement doesn’t have to be. By mapping the resident journey, truly understanding who your audience is, and building awareness long before any funding or delivery begins, you lay the groundwork for smoother projects, stronger relationships and more confident communities. These foundations will cost you upfront time, but they change everything. Start them early, adapt them as you need to, and when the time comes to deliver retrofit at scale, you’ll already have earned the most important thing of all: your residents’ trust.

 

Authors:

                         

Han, Customer Service Manager                  Craig, Customer Experience Manager