Customer Service

Here are three quick tips to help your email messages reach your subscribers’ inboxes, avoid spam complaints and maintain your status as a reputable sender:

By Jo-Anne Oliveri, ireviloution intelligence, Brisbane, Australia

Recently, I have been involved in the sale and purchase of a rent roll. I had the rare opportunity of consulting for both the buyer and purchaser. Let me say, this was the smoothest and least stressful rent roll transfer I have ever witnessed!

Now some might say there is a conflict of interest by consulting to both the seller and the purchaser, and yes, I would agree! I definitely had my reservations about consulting and advising to both of them, but I discussed my dilemma with both parties. They both agreed they would retain me as the consultant and adviser through the negotiation, transfer, settlement, transition and retention period. In fact, I even conducted the inspection and overview on the selling rent-roll, and prepared the due diligence report.

I've had clients asking me  this very question for years. Are shops really valuable to a company? Is there a better way? Let me give you some reasons why  mystery shops just might not be the answer you're looking for at your company. For the sake of this discussion, we're limiting this to phone and in-person shops.

1. Shoppers have bad days. Just like Leasing Professionals, shoppers have 'off' days, too. And this is reflected in the shopping report  that describes the Leasing Professionals' behavior. I once worked for a company who so strongly believed in this that they made sure their employees were shopped TWICE on the same day. That way, if one shop was horrible and one was good, they could throw the bad shop out (chalking it up to a bad day for the shopper). 

2. Shoppers have to remember how you behaved on the tour. Having been shopped numerous times in my career, I can tell you that sometimes shoppers get their facts confused. I have had shopping reports that accused me of failing to show all of the amenities on the property to the shopper - and they listed the ones I left out. The  problem? The property didn't HAVE the amenities I supposedly overlooked. 

So, you've read through countless fun blogs from within and outside the industry and yes, you've smiled to yourself as you've had to thumb through silly posts about the author's dogs or sunglasses and/or other gimmicky things to keep you reading. And yes, you've gone a step above and read through more authoritative beats like Mashable or TechCrunch or HBR to yes, still find yourself having to smile and get through gimmicky articles on social media. 

And in that time frame of lost minutes  (and yes, hours), you were trained over and over to think that social media was about #fans #followers #tweets #comments #posts and other "measurements". Well, guess what they were wrong and you were wrong to believe it. These vanity metrics simply don't add up to leases or renewals. At the very stretch, they are ONLY good for brand lift, which you likely will ONLY consider once you can DEMONSTRATE you have a handle on building true marketing and leasing ROI. Otherwise, I give it to your boss to tell you to eat it and find something else better to do with your time.

And the reason is simple, we as an industry need to spend the very little time we do have to market (how many of you truly have a full-time dedicated marketing manager on site???) on getting a return from it. 

It’s the question every property manager and industry partner wants to figure out: just how much does social media help build our brands, improve services, save money, and create new revenue?

I think it’s especially difficult to calculate social media’s rewards because they flow into many different buckets. I’m not implying this means we should shirk the responsibility of measuring ROI—but remember that there are benefits beyond leads, like branding, customer service, and SEO lift to marketing pages with proper social media integration.

It can take a long time to see that social media is generating leads, leases and sales, so we naturally try to justify our investment with other data, including increased page views, inbound traffic generation, SEO, and engagement.

Let me begin by wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah. For those of you who regularly read my scribbles, you are used to some pretty meaty topics. In light of the Holidays, this one will be a bit frothier. In each blog that I write there are certain themes which remain pretty consistent. One of my favorites is that real estate development is about the coolest industry on the planet. After all, our job is to make the world a better, more usable, more beautiful place.

Often my intended audience is the real estate developer (my hope is of course that there is some part of my subject matter which translates to my non-developer audience- or at least helps you better understand those temperamental developers who constantly tell you ‘We can’t afford that.’). Today, I would like to remind us all of something that is very easily glossed over as we perform our day-to-day tasks.

Some communities struggle with great maintenance and customer service – this blog is not for them.  Instead, I’m speaking to those communities who already do a fantastic job at customer service, have low response times for their apartment maintenance, and overall have the “fundamentals” down pat.

Let’s say you live at a community with horrible service, and that is why you are leaving.  Well, that is going to be at the top of your “must have” list because it is a struggle you are having at that moment.  But if you are living at a community with solid service, then you aren’t as focused on that aspect because it’s not a concern.  And if you tour a community that talks about their great service, there is a chance you will take their word on it.  In other words, you don’t understand the importance of what you have until it’s gone.  (I’m pretty sure there is a love song in there, somewhere)

So in a strange sense, your strong customer service and maintenance program may not be appreciated until they have already moved out and learn first-hand what they are missing.  It might feel nice they they are missing you now, but that doesn’t change the fact that they have already left your community. 

I hear the “Jack of all Trades” job description a lot regarding our on-site teams, that everybody chips in and works to get the job done.  For many, it is almost a badge of honor to be a Jack of all Trades, as it implies that you can handle anything they throw at you.  And in that respect, I totally agree!  But I also believe it is the model of inefficiency.

First of all, I want to be clear that this isn’t a discussion on whether people should step up when the job needs to be done.  For example, if all the leasing consultants are out of the office or otherwise busy, I firmly believe that the community manager has to be ready to take that next prospect on a property tour.  Every person needs to be able to rise to the occasion in order to get the job done.  However, there is a difference between every person doing every job, and every person having a specific job but able to lend a hand when it is needed.

Let’s look at leasing consultants specifically.  A leasing consultant has a wide variety of job functions, from leasing, to customer service, to administrative duties, such as preparing a lease.  Sales, customer service, and administrative work are all very different, and often one personality type is rarely fantastic at all three.  Years ago when I called the community office home, I can say that I was great at customer service and administrative work, but only average at leasing apartments.  But even though I was only average at sales, and my co-leasing consultant was much better than I was, we traded off handling prospects.  This clearly was not the best use of our resources!