Do you promote resident-maintenance chatting?

I was thinking today about how there are plenty of situations where apartment residents see their maintenance techs more than the leasing team, and I'm curious how communities use that interaction to continue the rapport-building process with the resident. In other words, do you train your maintenance techs to go beyond just the repair and to actually take a moment to chat with the resident to foster that connection?

That's a great idea. The tech should know the resident's name too. Unfortunately, I think a lot of management companies look at metrics around how fast maintenance items get closed and how many items are closed by a tech. That leaves no incentive for them to chat with the resident.

One company I worked with used these interactions as a key touchpoint in their lease renewal process. During weekly meetings, the entire team would hear what residents were up for renewal in the next 90 days. If anyone ran into those residents, it was an opportunity to say, "How is everything? Is there anything you need in your apartment? I know your lease is up for renewal soon. I hope you will be staying with us." Many residents were surprised that anyone on the team, especially maintenance team members, were so tuned in to their residency.

I think the time has come to include our maintenance staff in our goal to increase retention. In the past, they were often told NOT to talk with residents. The maintenance team can make or break a property. They are valuable and need to be valued and trained concerning interaction with our residents. They can be our front line ambassadors. Property management companies would be wise to include maintenance staff in customer service and resident retention training. It will pay big dividends!

I can't envision it any other way. We hold customer service training seminars for our maintenance teams a couple times a year, and reinforce it by including them in our quarterly marketing/leasing meetings. Our maintenance teams are surveyed after any work order or move in and one question rates "Friendliness of Maintenance Staff?"

So to answer your question Brent, yes.

Some random thoughts:

1. We assign one person on our maintenance staff to perform maintenance service requests (SRs). We perform about 2,500 SRs a year, so this person essentially becomes the face of the property and probably has more interaction with our customers than anyone else on our staff. The qualities and selection of this person takes alot of thought. This person needs a broad range of skills, customers need to have confidence in the person's skills, and the person needs to be able to balance customer communication with efficiency of performing the service.

2. Everything is marketing. Every activity that we perform impacts our customers, whether its mowing the lawn, maintaining the pool or plowing and shoveling 18 feet of snow. We need to see the maintenance staff as essentially part of the leasing staff. Once we do, it changes our whole outlook on this aspect of our marketing, which affects referrals from our customers and customer retention.

3. Inculcate each maintenance person with the property's vision, mission and values statement: Our vision is to build customer-for-life relationships. We accomplish our vision through our mission, which is to so overwhelm our customers with service that they will tell everyone they know. Finally, the values that will guide us can be summed up by the Golden Rule, we want to treat our customers in the way that we would want to be treated.

4. These are principles that come from leadership and need to be imbued daily, as opposed to annually or quarterly.

Rick Hevier
Richard Hevier
Richard S. Hevier
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Rick - Excellent Post! It really encapsulates the essence of what each and every propsrty should strive for!

While I believe it is in the best interests of any property to use their maintenance staff as good will ambassadors, lets be realistic. Some B and C type communities keep these guys going 24/7. The pay is typically meager for these guys and most of them are super people. So lets get the pay scale up to better levels and then maybe ask more out of these guys that hold it together so management and leasing can do their respective jobs, which if you've forgotten is playing the role of ambassador. Many companies have put additional constraints on techs as they have policies that state repairs will be done within 48-72 hours or we give you rent credit. So management maybe the manager and assistant plus leasing need to step it up even further.

At least your hearing a different perspective from one who has seen what these guys do.

A few observations:

1. We need to break down the barriers between the "office" and the maintenance "shop", which can often lead to an "us" vs. "them" mentality. We have to dismantle these kinds of barriers to achieving our overall vision, mission and values strategy. One screwy initiative that I took was to get a maintenance uniform shirt (with name) for our leasing staff and had them work alongside the maintenance techs intermittently to get a sense of the challenges of the tasks. I've often thought about pursuing the reverse - maintenance techs getting a chance to see what it is like to experience the "office" demands.

2. Invest in quality service. The adage that you get what you pay for is also true with the "meager" wages paid to maintenance staff. One of the first things I did was to SIGNIFICANTLY raise pay, and then hired maintenance staff who fit the pay scale. I wanted to instill a sense of professionalism and to create longer-term employee relationships.

For those who are worried about their payroll budget, realize that we expend significant resources in time and money to train maintenance staff. High turnover in maintenance staff wastes so much money and time. Hiring on the cheap affects the quality of maintenance service and the experience that our customers receive. This is the epitome of pound-wise and penny foolish. In our market, we pay perhaps the highest wages because much of our marketing program focuses on referrals from previous and current customers, and customer retention.

Rick Hevier
Richard Hevier
Richard S. Hevier
[email protected]

Great post Rick. In the past I have had new office and leasing staff spend several days with the maintenance staff and new maintenance staff spend time with the office and leasing staff. It has always helped to break down the ‘us’ and ‘them’ syndrome

That's an excellent start to recognizing what these individuals do for a property. Typically the office staff is slammed by too many corporate initiatives and the maintenance staff is slammed by too much PM, projects, and maintenance. Sometimes we just get lost in all of this forgetting that it's the residents that come first.

I know many property managers and regional managers that depend deeply on their maintenance managers. Life can be hellish without their experience and know how. So giving these guys (and ladies) a better pay scale and making them professionals in both appearance and through hiring is the right path to the right property focus.

Good for you and hat's off to your ideas.