How Associa Transformed Homeowner Support with Vonage
Associa is a global leader in community and homeowner association (HOA) management, overseeing properties ranging from single-family homes to high-rises across the world. With 50 branches managing thousands of communities, Associa’s centralized Customer Care and Accountability (CCA) team serves as the frontline for homeowner interactions. The team’s mission is simple yet ambitious: deliver timely, accurate, and empathetic support to homeowners at scale.
Challenge
Disjointed customer care program; higher call volumes and wait times; operational bottlenecks reducing agent productivity
Solution
Vonage Contact Center, Vonage AI Virtual Assistant
Results
Call deflection rates of 46-48% leading to faster resolution, agent empowerment and a better experience for customers; average hold times reduced from 3-4 hours to 31 seconds; repeat caller rate cut by more than halfA Fragmented Customer Care Program Under Pressure
As Associa was growing, it was also expanding its portfolio significantly. Adding new branches, onboarding thousands of new communities, and extending its reach across North America and beyond, its CCA team was beginning to show signs of strain in providing exceptional customer service.
"Callers were waiting three to four hours, leading to high abandonment rates, frustrated customers, and burned-out agents," explains JoAngela Morin, Director of Customer Care, Associa. "Repetitive inquiries and upset callers drove high turnover, and we needed to scale to more branches without raising costs for homeowners.”The existing call center infrastructure was disjointed, making it difficult to route calls efficiently, track performance consistently, or give agents the tools they needed to resolve issues on the first contact. Repeat callers were common, accounting for 15-20% total call volume, a clear signal that homeowners were not getting the answers they needed the first time around.
Associa needed a solution that could keep pace with its growth, one that could unify contact center operations, reduce the burden on agents, and give homeowners faster, more reliable access to the information they needed without a proportional increase in costs.
A Unified Contact Center Enhanced by AI
Associa partnered with Vonage to implement Vonage Contact Center (VCC) and Vonage AI Virtual Assistant to build a robust, scalable customer engagement solution.
The implementation was carefully designed to reflect the nuances of Associa’s communities and homeowner needs. With VCC, Associa unified its operations and gained better control over call quality and agent connectivity, which was crucial for their global team working remotely. VCC provided supervisors with real-time visibility into performance and enabled smarter call routing across the CCA team, increasing deflection rates and reducing call wait times. With AI Virtual Assistant to handle the most common, repetitive homeowner questions, agents are able to focus on the complex, high-value, personalized interactions for their customers..
Said Morin, “We were initially skeptical of non-human support, so we collaborated closely with Vonage engineers to design a solution that handled repetitive tasks while preserving a human touch., Now customers have options – if they want a rep, they get a rep, but if they want a quick answer, they can self-serve immediately. It’s the best of both worlds."
Scaling Service Without Scaling Costs
Morin continued, “Vonage Contact Center and Vonage’s AI Virtual Assistant delivered immediate, quantifiable results that far exceeded our expectations. We expected a 30-35% deflection rate to reduce friction and create a more personalized customer experience with faster resolution, but we are consistently seeing 46-48% deflection rates. Average hold times plummeted from peak waits of 3-4 hours to just 31 seconds, and repeat callers fell from 15-20% of total volume to 7%, because homeowners could now get answers on the first try.”
Vonage also drove efficiency resulting in savings for Associa and enabling the company to to serve more customers without increasing costs. Associa expanded its service offering a year ahead of plan, adding 250,000 individual homeowner units and five new branches without adding a single employee. Agent performance increased, with average handle time reduced by 2 minutes, while the abandonment rate decreased by 3%.
“By offloading repetitive tasks to the virtual assistant, agents could focus on complex, relationship-building interactions. I was secretly thinking, this will never work,” Morin added.“But I learned through working with the virtual assistant engineers that we can continuously expand what AI handles. The more we use it, the more we can train it to recognize new intents and respond accurately to homeowner needs.”
Because Associa’s call volume fluctuates with the seasons, with homeowner inquiries surging around topics such as dues and community events, the deflection rate naturally shifts throughout the year.
Morin concluded, “We have consistently seen between 40% and 48% of calls resolved through Vonage AI Virtual Assistant, which has been amazing."
By embracing Vonage Contact Center and its AI capabilities, Associa successfully balanced the need for automation with the desire for human connection, ensuring homeowners receive timely, accurate support on their terms. The partnership with Vonage has allowed Associa to grow its business and onboard new communities without linear cost increases typically associated with scaling support – a model that positions the company for continued, sustainable growth.
Discover how Vonage Contact Center and AI Virtual Assistant can help you scale your operations and create better connections with your customers.
