Does Your Maintenance Process Stack Up To Others In The Industry?
Having a successful business of any kind takes ambition, hard-work, and goals, but what does it take to make sure that hard work and ambition gets the success that your property management company needs? Through analyzing many management companies we’ve discovered that there are four key components that successful companies are focusing on to make the best use of their time and energy, and maximize satisfaction. If you’re curious to see the visual statistics of your own maintenance process, Property Meld at no charge can help you evaluate these components, along with more important factors to prepare you for even higher success.
Have Trouble-Shooting Plans
The first component is having a routine troubleshooting plan for simple maintenance. If a resident notifies you of a faulty garbage disposal you might want to reconsider taking the time to send someone to the property just to simply flip a switch on and find nothing broken. Calling them to try and troubleshoot with you could save a lot of energy.
If giving troubleshooting instructions over the phone is difficult, having “how-to” email templates with step by step instructions for common maintenance issues will serve more visual learners. Templates work great for problems such as inspecting and flipping circuit breaker switches, walking through buttons on thermostats and air conditioners, and of course the garbage disposal.
Verification of Completion
Ensuring that a repair has been completed is a critical part of a maintenance process. Resident satisfaction and the speed of a repair hold a close relationship, so it is important to track that repairs have been successful. This also prevents resident frustration in case a repair was not complete, and they have to then re-submit or chase down a resolution.
Follow Up
This part of the process may also be called babysitting. Making sure that the repair has been scheduled, and that all parties involved know what the next steps are in the process. Once the repair has been completed, following up with the vendor to ensure completion, as well as following up with the resident to verify satisfaction, are essential steps in the follow-up process.
Resident Satisfaction
This might seem obvious but according to customer reviews and ratings, following up with residents to ensure their maintenance has been completed and their problems have been managed, is an essential quality for resident satisfaction. 31% of residents who do not renew existing lease agreements, list maintenance as the #1 reason.
It’s easy to feel overloaded with maintenance requests during the summer and winter months and deciding against following up with residents seems like a tempting way to save a little more time but we promise that the time spent is worth it. Ensuring your residents are completely happy with the completed maintenance, shows you care and leaves the resident with a professional reputation of your process.
