Without the Right Communication, Maintenance Will Suffer

Most people think communication is about what they are saying, however exceptional communication isn’t about what you said, it is about what the other person heard. Every single individual involved in a maintenance request should know what is happening at every step in the process and can get engaged if they need to. Should the resident call to ask what the status of their request, no matter who picks up the phone, that employee should know. 

Personally, my biggest pet peeve is calling customer service and having to be transferred or put on hold because the support contact couldn’t answer my question or needed to talk to someone else on their team.

I always say, effective communication is when everyone who is involved understands the exact details. Now, my analogy may be a bit odd, but follow me. When communication is not just shared, but documented, that is effective communication. If a person onsite happened to be out unexpectedly (I have always said in the hospital and you didn’t know when they would return) would another person know exactly what to do and pick up where they left off? Would the resident need to re-explain the issue or would the new technician have to ask the resident for what is happening?

Years ago, I always trained my Property Managers to know the full position of Maintenance Tech’s, now I don’t mean how to actually fix a flapper (although, that one is a pretty easy fix) but does the property manager understand “how” things work which will lead to asking the right questions. There must be effective communication between all three parties; “Front of House” that includes Property Managers, Leasing Agents and Assistant Managers and the “Back of the House” Maintenance, which includes, Tech’s Managers, Groundskeepers. 

Have the Property Manager work with the maintenance team for a solid 5 days, not just a few hours. Have them understand all aspects from work orders, to make readies etc. 

Now I am not saying this is just a one way street where the “Front of the House” should be the only one responsible for understanding other positions, I fully believe that the “Back of the House” should also understand what the Front of the House is doing. Once again, I don’t think Maintenance should necessarily be able to fully jump in and post something on social media or even apply someone’s rent money, but how awesome would it be if Maintenance knew and understood how to answer the phone if they were in the office and be able to answer a prospects questions. Better yet, what if Maintenance teams were part of the Leasing Team when it comes to meetings? Why do we separate our maintenance teams for training and our leasing teams for training? Sure we can look at training from in depth to a higher level however, in order to communicate well we need to row in the same direction for the same goal. As a resident or even a prospect, fully seeing the entire team working together I would instantly feel the sense that everyone has my best interest at heart. 

What if you're short staffed? We all keep hearing about short staffed communities. (It is even more imperative to have effective communication when there is less people as there is more multi-tasking happening) Believe it or not, HappyCo offers a service where multifamily maintenance tech’s with up to 25 years experience are available to answer and communicate (effectively) with your residents on each and every service request. Due to the extensive experience our tech’s have, they know the right questions to ask, to be able to work with the residents on gathering the information in detail that is needed for onsite maintenance tech’s to be able to optimize their time and quickly complete the work orders. Plus, we all know residents want to be heard when it comes to something that is needed to be fixed in their home. They want to talk to someone immediately. 

The bottom line is effective communication only works when there are no corners, a complete circle, where the right hand knows what the left hand is doing. We as an industry must do better.. Without maintenance tech’s we would not have residents wanting to renew and without leasing staff we would not have created an exceptional customer experience. We need each other more than ever in 2023 and into the future! Let’s work together. 

High Tech and Higher Maintenance: The Evolution of Maintenance

April 22, 2019, 1,418 days ago I published a blog called High Tech and Higher Touch: The Evolution of Leasing. Much as happened in the last 1,418 days. We have had the world shut down, human interaction has changed, expectations of consumer habits have evolved, but one thing has stayed the same: the need for exceptional customer experience.  

Our industry has made great strides around leasing centralization, where many have realized that technology like self guided tours was not created to replace human interaction, but the right technology must enhance the customer's experience. 

In my previous blog, I mentioned from SatisFacts 2019 Online Renter Study, the perception of quality customer service is ranked #2 in importance regarding the leasing decision, which lets us know elimination of leasing jobs will not be a thing of the future. Self-guided tours allow us to better customize a prospects experience, ultimately complimenting the onsite team’s quality customer service. This has not changed in the last 5 years, customer service is still just as important. 

Moving forward, the evolution of Maintenance; now that residents have had to deal with many changes over the last years, what is their expectation?  We continue to hear about maintenance centralization; will that become equally as important as leasing in the next 5 years?  The need for exceptional customer service still stands as important if not more important. With instant gratification, DIY and such flexible schedules where residents continue to balance all that is thrown their way, how can the onsite teams handle the expectations? Better yet, how can they handle the needs from residents with an astounding increase in open maintenance positions, current employees are looking for more work life balance and much more. Is “centralization maintenance” the answer? What does the term even mean? 

When we think about “centralizing" anything, it doesn’t mean just removing current people from their positions, perhaps we can look at this opportunity to focus more on the quality of our current employees and invest in those and allow companies to help improve the customer experience through customer satisfaction. Currently in our industry we continue to see the average response time to a service request to be a standard 24/48 hour or even 72 hour time frame. Most residents' service requests are those easy ones to fix, garbage disposal, microwave filter, the switch in the electrical box or even a blind slat replacement. In order to increase or even maintain our residents expectations we must look to innovative solutions that will allow our residents to be heard as well as meet the residents preferences. 

Understanding the residents' expectations around maintenance including  DIY and instant gratification and putting together the struggle of so many open employee positions, innovative solutions like Happy Force leads to increased residents satisfaction, which ultimately leads to a lease renewal. What we can be confident in remembering; when a resident is deciding about renewing their lease, what impacts their decision? The  #2 impact, "quality of maintenance service provided scored a 4.61 out of 5, on the SatisFacts Biennial Online Survey. This lets us know that just like leasing and the options to tour in person, virtual or self guided,  there needs to be an option to be able to exceed residents expectations around maintenance service. DIY, Facetime service calls and optimizing current maintenance techs time on each service request must become part of the future in multifamily. According to a 2020 Survey from Kingsely, “The requirement for social distance, as well as continued focus on worker health and safety, will remain yet for some time. To help in communication and improving work, virtual technology should be a more widely used method of performing maintenance diagnostics and troubleshooting.”

When a resident reaches out for assistance within their home, we must look for opportunities to increase resident satisfaction, reduce the response time and be accepting of the new options such as video tutorial, FAQ guides, remote technicians and still the option for a tech to enter the home. It comes down to optimizing the team while giving the options the resident would like to have available at their fingertips. 

My opinion 1,418 days ago still stands true, we must look at the traditional role of maintenance and view new solutions as an evolution not as an elimination to keep up with the changing preferences of renters.