When we speak to property managers, we often hear they want to wait until the summer to implement a process change. But why would you wait until you’re in the fog of war to solve your company’s biggest operational headaches and control your maintenance process?
Based on our customer metrics, maintenance issues increase by almost 60% during the summer months. At the same time, 80% of rental turnovers are happening from May through September.
Trying to juggle this influx of maintenance repairs while scheduling turns and keeping up with the rest of your responsibilities is not easy. Sometimes, it seems impossible, and you will face negative consequences like employee burnout, unhappy residents, and losing the trust you have built with your property owners.
When you’re preparing for an influx of maintenance requests, the last thing you want to do is make a process change. When you are running on empty, it is nearly impossible to implement a new tech stack, even if it is going to make things easier for you. This is why you can’t wait.
Why You Need to Make a Change Now
Failing to control your maintenance process before shit hits the fan sets your property management company up for failure. Without a proper process, you will see detrimental effects ripple through your business.
First, with an influx of maintenance requests, you need a streamlined process for scheduling and assigning work orders and ensuring they are repaired quickly. If you are still making phone calls or emails to schedule work orders with vendors and residents, you are not only spending hours a day playing the middleman but also risking maintenance requests falling through the cracks. Without a view of all active work orders, things will get missed or forgotten, leading to angry calls from residents. Since customer data shows a 60% increase in maintenance requests during the summer, these problems are only exacerbated.
In addition to scheduling and communicating with your residents and maintenance team, failing to troubleshoot maintenance issues can lead to an increase of billable time by paying a vendor for an unnecessary trip charge. A resident can easily fix many maintenance issues and doesn’t necessarily require a technician or vendor to be dispatched. Without a system in place for troubleshooting, you will need to call each resident to discuss the issues they are facing and walk them through the steps needed to fix the issues. This takes time out of your day that could be better spent elsewhere, like…
One of the clunkiest parts of the maintenance process is following up with a vendor to confirm work is completed and closing out a work order. Sometimes a vendor may forget to submit an invoice, or the work order was marked complete and not finished to the resident’s satisfaction. With a process to follow up on maintenance requests, an issue may be left unfinished, leading to upset residents. In addition, if it takes months for vendors to submit invoices, it can cause your accounting department grief and lead to confusion on your monthly owner statements.
Prepare for Summer with a Maintenance Solution
With a dedicated maintenance solution, you can take control of your maintenance process. Stop losing work orders, keep your maintenance team happier, and provide residents with the best experience possible.
With automated maintenance software, residents can select available times when they submit their work orders. This way, your vendor or maintenance technician can schedule the work when they know it works for the resident. With this automatic scheduling, you will save hours a day playing phone tag, trying to get work scheduled with all the parties involved.
In addition to making scheduling a breeze, property maintenance software allows you to create customized templates for troubleshooting. These templates are triggered when a resident submits a work order with a specific keyword. With these templates, you can solve work orders without having to dispatch a maintenance team member or even pick up the phone!
Fix your follow-up process with automation! With automatic messaging, you can remind vendors to close out a work order and submit an invoice as soon as work is complete. In addition, residents can receive an automatic message letting them know the job is complete and asking them to provide feedback. This way, you will confirm the work was done, and your resident will have a chance to rate your maintenance process. This feedback is a great way to identify any issues you have or share positive reviews with prospective residents.
Schedule a demo with our team today to take control of your maintenance process.
