Please Stop Texting Me!

Those who know me know that my fur baby Bozo means the world to me. So, when a prominent doggie daycare mistreated him as a puppy, I pulled him out immediately and expressed my disappointment to the manager on duty. It's been over two and a half years, and I have not received any communication from them addressing my concern.

Instead, I have received customer satisfaction surveys and?automated texts to vote for them as Houston’s best doggie daycare. I filled out the survey and emailed them expressing why I would never recommend them to my friends and family. There was no way they would get my vote. They texted me on Halloween, again!

Why am I telling you all this? As an apartment management company, make sure you don’t make the same mistake as this doggy day care. Take care to build a mechanism in your automated workflows to:

1. Monitor, read, understand, and analyze what your residents are saying in response to your communication -be it emails, texts, surveys, social media posts - anything and everything.
2. Determine and address residents' concerns to regain the confidence of the dissatisfied residents.
3. Identify systemic issues plaguing your resident experience and work with your management to address operational roadblocks.
4. Ask open-ended questions in your surveys and ensure that you have relevant AI tools to help you categorize and outline the key areas of opportunity at your property.
5. Go the extra mile, by following up with your residents after their issues have been addressed.

Per FTC's new ruling, as a business, you cannot differentiate between happy and dissatisfied customers when approaching them for a review. So, proactively identifying dissatisfied residents, addressing their concerns, and communicating with them in a timely fashion may get you an extra positive review.

Sharing her advice on automation for multifamily, Nicole Patterson, Vice President, J Turner Research, said, “Automation is not something you want to jump in to without considering all areas of impact. There is time and place for automation and in order for it to be done successfully you want to ensure that you have proper guard rails in place to protect your customer relationships and your reputation.”

“When overall resident satisfaction does not seem to be at a healthy spot, you may want to delay your feedback generation automation strategy until the sentiment improves. The best time to consider automation is when sentiment is improving or when satisfaction is proven to be above average,” Patterson added.

About The Extra Mile

The Extra Mile is an online column serving the multifamily industry that features tips and testimonials for providing exceptional service for your residents. Reputation management expert Priyanka Agarwal will share exemplary customer service examples from inside and outside the industry which can enhance a property’s reputation and, ultimately, encourage new leases, referrals, and renewals. For questions and/or comments, contact [email protected].

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