What??? That can't be right. And yet, that's the perception residents often have. If a service request has not been completed as quickly as the resident expects, or if something wasn't done quite right, residents will often blame the office staff rather than the maintenance team. Why?
Everyone loves the maintenance team! They are the ones who swoop in and save the day. They stop that annoying leak, put new weather stripping around the bedroom window to keep out the draft, fix the oven just hours before the family comes over for a birthday dinner! It's more convenient to blame the office staff.
As we all have experienced, however, the key to resolving service requests is approaching them as a cohesive team. Everyone plays a critical role in resolving maintenance issue:, from taking the request, to doing the repair, to cleaning up, to following up. So, what are some things you can do to bring the team together and make service request resolution everyone's super-success?
Here's an idea. Format a Word document into 3 columns:
1. First Column. As a team, identify the 10 most frequent maintenance issues at your community. Every community is different, from slab leaks to mysterious light switches, to termites, to bed bugs, to aging appliances.
2. Column 2. For each issue, note whether there is a troubleshooting tip that can be offered to the resident for that issue. Example: Garbage disposal won't work. Troubleshooting tip: Have you tried hitting the reset button? It is located here (describe where to find it).
3. Column 3. For each issue, identify 3 - 5 questions the office staff can ask the resident to provide the most useful information possible for that particular service request.
At the end of this exercise, you will have a 1-page cheat sheet for the office team to use when taking service requests.
What tips and tricks do you and your team use to keep communication clear and consistent between the maintenance team and office team?
Jen Piccotti is the VP Consulting Services for SatisFacts Research. www.SatisFacts.com