Instant Tenant Services

February 13, 2020

How to Speed Up Tenant Services

As a progressive landlord or property management professional, you’re likely handling more properties than you’re comfortable with. That volume can make it difficult to respond to tenants quickly.

Time, budget, energy and lack of insight all conspire to push you back to those “old school” habits. And that’s not good because poor customer service translates to unhappy tenants, terminated leases, bad word of mouth, and higher costs. Responsive, fast tenant service is at the center of the most successful businesses now.

Starbucks, JetBlue, Virgin Airlines, Costco, and Ikea are all good examples of companies who are customer obsessed. Keeping tenants happy should be your new forte. Wouldn’t it be nice to be branded as the customer service king of tenant services?

What you need is a process to put it into action, and a few tips to perk it up.

Infographic courtesy of Hubspot.com

Instant Gratification and On-Demand Services

Todays tenants (Millennials) are really into this new on-demand culture. For instance, some of the amenities they’re wanting involve instant digital services. They expect instant services because other businesses are giving it to them. Take some time to consider these modern young tenants. It can go a long way to helping you keep them comfortable and continuously leased.

Every year, each tenant decides whether to continue their lease. And your relationship with them is forefront on their minds. They remember the responses, conversations, and outcomes.

Studies show landlords and property managers want to create a service-oriented business, but they have yet to find a way to achieve it. Many are using some sort of property management platform, yet they’re still struggling to deliver on expected tenant service levels. This matter of delivering at scale might be a weighty factor.

The first step to implementing this service first culture is get into the “whats and hows” of service delivery.

3 Simple Questions to Ask

1. what do you need to deliver?
2. how will you deliver it?
3. how do you know it’s working?

What Do Tenants Need?

Tenants want comfort, communication, working appliances, frictionless living, easy transparent financials, and a feeling of belonging. It’s simple, they want to be happy living in your rental.

When things don’t work, something’s broken and dangerous, you take too long to respond, and you make it hard to pay rent, or view a unit and apply for it, they get unhappy. Tenants don’t enjoy ownership, but they want to feel like they’re at home in their rental unit, and be acknowledged and appreciated.

With an online property management platform, you have the means to listen, communicate, educate, and learn. The digital communication experience might not appeal to you, but younger renters have no problem with it. They like that direct communication so your tenant portal is more important than you’d imagine.

How You’ll Deliver Exquisite Service

Deliver tenant services via a brand experience that tells them you are service oriented, responsive, reliable, and will handle all issues quickly and friction free. You can do this via:

online payment portal — where they can pay quickly without having to remember, with no cash or checks, which is time consuming and error prone. Errors lead to friction and tenant relations issues.
direct maintenance reporting tool — if there’s snow/ice that needs to be removed from walkways, or a kitchen range burner doesn’t work, or a light switch fails, or there’s no hot water, they can reach you fast. Speed and responsiveness are important, even though you’re ultra busy. The communications tools tell them that their message was received and about progress of the maintenance repair and follow ups.
communications tools — tenants like to express themselves fully in their own way. The digital communications features lets them send detailed messages, or send a picture via their smartphone. You can conduct informative surveys that help you discover tenants attitudes about their building, neighborhood, safety, your service quality, and amenities.
professional maintenance and repair service scheduler — using professional grade contractors to deliver prompt and courteous services is vital. They’re an extension of your property management brand and tenant service. You can dispatch service calls digitally through your property management software. How your tenants feel about the service people is something you should know.
information and education — through the tenant portal, your tenants can read leases via their smartphone, find help files, and get specific answers fast using the tenant communications feature, and reach your staff directly if necessary.

You can achieve this service acceleration by using ManageCasa.

Are Your Instant Tenant Services Working?

The beauty of digital systems is they can record events and communications. Reporting tools help you identify disappointment, service failures, and other events that lead to increased vacancies. They’ll help you learn which conversations, topics, and responses were quick and successful. You can also do tenant satisfaction surveys to learn about how they view your communications and service responsiveness.

Besides the hard financial numbers, you have soft data which indicates customer satisfaction – closed tickets, time to resolution, and less irate tenants.

Start Your Customer Centered Service Today

Now you have a simple 3 step plan using a modern property management system. It fulfills the on-demand, instant service model that’s all the rage today. From inquiries to onboarding, and lease renewals to maintenance follow ups, you’re going to remove the friction and time waste they don’t like.

The 5 key channels for improved tenant services will keep your tenants comfortable and confident in your company.
When your tenants are happy, your property owners and landlords will be happy too. If we remember that property management really is tenant management, we only need this automated responsive system to keep the wheel running smooth, to a level you can handle.

Take a closer look at the ManageCasa tenant management solution now. It’s time to discover even greater value for your property management company in tenant services, cost efficiency, tenant satisfaction, and more revenue — all the good stuff you want.

ManageCasa Tenant Management Platform. See the features and take a demo.