Resolving Service Requests vs. Turning Units

From a maintenance team perspective, during the summer months when there is a high demand for turned units and an equally high demand for resolving service requests quickly would you prefer having part-time help to assist just with turns or just with handling service requests? Or would you have that part-time help work with whatever was needed at that moment?

Hmmm, get the empty ones ready or take care of existing renters? There is a two-part approach to this, I think. First, there almost has to be a triage system--take care of the most critical issues first, whether in an occupied or unoccupied unit, BUT, if the turnaround for an unoccupied unit is short, you may have to focus on that one as delaying a move-in is something you don't just want to get into. (If/Then Decision Tree anyone?) When you really get into a unit that is being turned around, there may be problems that were never reported, so fixing it to move-in standards may take longer than expected.

This is not to imply that this is an either/or proposition but I cannot believe that existing residents would be too pleased to hear that their problem is not being addressed because your resources are needed to turn another unit around. That makes the property sound more like a business and less like a 'community'. There is a TV commercial where a boy is sitting in a room with an adult and the boy asks for an ice cream. The adult says no, but then a new boy shows up and asks for an ice cream, and gets it. The adult says the ice cream is only for new people and the first boy says "Well, I am new." The adult replies "Yes, but he [the second boy who got the ice cream] is new-er."

I will never send a temp to an occupy unit, That will be a liability ready to happen
I believe we have a resposability with our tenants to addres their maintenance issues ASAP.And a libiality with who we send to their units....

When I had been on that possition, ussually I hire sub contractors or temp to help with the turns (since the are empty units)

That's an excellent point about liability. Thanks for your answer on this!

I agree, Charles. It's really a fine line to walk. I like your ice cream cone reference. How many residents end up feeling that way?!

VPs of Property Management don't like my solution but I do it anyway (I give up leasing staff): hire painters to paint vacant turns and keep a part time tech year-round. The part time person can clean turns in off season, help with grounds, learn from the experienced techs and move into a full time position when one becomes available.

Definitely a tough trade off: giving up leasing staff, who handle critical communication and customer service responsibilites or being short handed on the maintenance side and not being able to keep up on routine service requests during heavy turnover season (which has an equally critical impact on the resident's perception of customer service).

Generally there has to be a buy-in from all team members for this to work. It helps when Managers step into the role of leasing professional and take a weekend day. For properties that are 300 units or less, it works pretty well! (But I have come to recognize I can hold my own when it comes to leasing and I will work over in the evening to catch up on management duties.) For larger properties that have "sister properties" I would hire a floater or two for leasing who can share hours where it is busiest and to help cover for people's vacation time. (Teachers are great for this!) That, to me, is the biggest challenge - keeping the team happier, less stressed in the summer so they can have time off to spend with family and attend things like family reunions, etc.

I've definitely seen the impact it has when the team sees the manager roll up his or her sleeves and show that "we're all in this together!" Working a weekend day is a big one that makes a huge difference to the rest of the team!

The company I worked for got into this problem quite heavily a few years ago. There were too many move outs during a given month and people waiting to lease up those vacancies. Since most of the properties were less than 100 units, the on site's were husband and wife teams who ran them. However with paints to do, and upgrades at the same time, the normal daily maintenance was slipping. I was asked to take the maintenance work orders on five properties for a while. I spent one day a week at each property to free the on sites up to clean/prep the vacant units. I found it worked well with a flex schedule--- sort of a triage of maintenance requests. Things like busted water heaters and HVAC got up front, and I could keep resetting the smaller, less important things back, yet could get those done timely. It just takes a little management to accomplish that.
I did a LOT of driving. I would call each on site and see what was catastrophic the night before, and if not much, I would go play catch up on the ones I had back burnered, and played PR with the tenants in the process. Soon, we were caught up, and I was even able to go fill in for one of the manager on sites who gave up the ghost and quit.
You can work it out by having someone who is loyal and authorized to act in the Management Company's best interest without being questioned. Just find a loyal employee and authorize him/her to carry the maintenance ball, and don't bother them very much. (Did that step on anyone's toes? Hope it didn't.) Many maintenance requests are just not that serious, and you have to know what can wait and what can't, and how to tell the tenant and make them like the fact they are waiting on you to fix their problem. Can be sort of like a country preacher making them fall into the hands of assurance they will indeed make it. (No, I never sold used cars, I learned this on my own.)

When things get crazy and we can't keep up on the maintenance side, my office staff steps in. We can prep units for paint, we can check the appliance to be sure they are in working order, even paint if nessesary to get a turn done. If it takes after hours or weekend work so be it. When it come to choosing between a current resident and a turn, we don't. They both have to be done and it's our job to get it done. Whether that means working OT, calling in help from sister communities (how come we don't have "brother" communities) or calling in a contractor to handle paint, cleaning, and flooring if nessesary. I know upper management and owners don't always agree with calling in contractors, but I don't see how we can afford not to if end result could be a vacant apartment.

Herb - thanks for your insight on this issue. This is extremely helpful. You make an excellent point about how you're not only taking care of the maintenance issues, but you're an important part of the communication process, or PR. It sounds like having a floating technician - one who is tried and true within the company - can make a huge impact for those heavy turnover months. Thanks again!

Hi Stephani - I love that you and your office team are willing to step in and roll up your sleeves and get things done. It's true that sometimes you have to spend money to make money - i.e. paying for outside contractors to do paint/flooring/etc., paying OT, and so on. I really admire the teams who cross train as much as they can: maintenance techs can take prospects on a tour, leasing agents can prep for paint, conduct a final spiff and so on. My favorite thing you said, "When it comes to choosing between a current resident and a turn, we don't." That shows a strong commitment to your existing customer, and I guarantee they notice!

At my community, we increase the assistant managers hours during the busy season so he can take on some of the property upkeep. This allows the maintenance tech more time to get turns and service requests done efficiently. From May-August, the assistant works 24 hours per week. The rest of the year he works 18. It works very well for us.

An On-Site can make $300 - $400 and up on a nasty turn with paint. (the nastier the better). So they don't want a lot of other stuff in the way when they get one.
Turn arounds are the icing on the cake, supplementing their standard salaries.
An On-Site will always act on a turn before they do much of anything else, and I can't blame them. This does not help Corporate, but after all Corporate designed the pay plan so if they don't like it, they can always change things. (But it has been this way the last ten years, so I guess they are happy.)
If the On-Site gets:

Turns
Grounds + Maintenance
Paint
Office
Free Apt
Free Utilities
Working other properties when the manager bugged out.
Oh yeah, and travel pay as well!

It works out pretty well. I have done this and made upwards of a $75,000 year.
It, of course, gets pretty long hours and hectic. I also spent some years doing nothing but Turn-Paints (spray), and made upwards of a $50,000 year. I had an apartment but never lived there, just set it up for now and then.

Thanks Rose. Great strategy!

I think the question is as unique as the property or the staff. There are lots of books that recommend to Outsource what your are not good at. So, if A/C repairs are a weak spot - look to contract those repairs. If turning units is taking too long, hire a make-ready firm who can bring 3 or 4 people to turn a unit. On another note, I would also consider your existing renter base - who are they going to be most comfortable with in thier home making a repair - a familiar face or a contractor. I don't think I helped...

Chris you are correct we should definately play to our strengths and if possible in times of high demand contract to cover our weaknesses. The only flaw is most companies do not allow vendors in occupied appartments alone, so if you don't have the staff to get jobs done without a contractor you certainly can't spare someone to stand over them in an occupied unit. Letting a contractor into an occupied unit alone is a HUGE liability!

Herb - Is an On-Site someone who is already a tech employed by the property management company and is given this extra responsibility, or is an On-Site an independent Contractor that is hired by a PM company on a project by project basis? Thanks!

Hi Chris - I think you make an excellent point. It does make sense to outsource what your team is not good at. Like they say, "Don't major in your minors." And it also makes sense that the residents and the property staff would not be 100% comfortable with a temp doing routine maintenance requests. Thanks for your input!

Hi Stephani - Excellent point about needing someone to oversee the contractor in an occupied unit. I guess all of these points lead me to believe that the ideal situation would be for a team to have access to a part-time floater during those crazy turn months. Someone who is employed and trained by the property management company and known and trusted by the staff. Of course, the world is certainly not ideal, and teams most often just need to make it work any way they can with the resources they have. Great input!

@ Jen

Thanks for your question. We (in this neck of the woods) call "On-Sites" the usual Husband/Wife team who manage the property, aka "The Managers". Normally, the wife runs the office, leases and moves out folk, and in the case of a Tax Credit Property, does the recertifications. The wife normally holds the title of "manager", while the husband holds the title of "caretaker".
What is difficult to do, is to locate people to perform these jobs. IE: You don't have much luck getting a person who has only worked at Sonic to do Recertification paperwork on Tax Credit, unless you either train her (assuming she is clerically skilled to begin with) or send her off to a school. Both are done. On the caretaker, you can usually find someone who knows how to mow. If you have to teach someone to mow grass, you have an immediate problem anyway. So take someone who can mow grass and graduate them to doing commercial landscaping work, it is not that difficult. It gets harder to find someone in the caretaker field who can figure out what is leaking, or not switching on, or not cooling, or the washing machine won't spin. We hire folks under the title of "light" maintenance, and if they are a skilled handyman, all the better, for us, and for their own paycheck. So hiring "On-Sites" can be the luck of the draw, but amazingly, we have some long term, excellent people on the payroll as managers. They are, however, same as good tenants, becoming harder and harder to find.
We don't really have the management hiarchy of the large zillion unit property management agencies, but we have a lot of properties in the less than 100 unit arena.
The On-Sites get a salary, free apartment, free utilities, salary for the office, salary for the grounds, and usually minimum wage for other work. (I don't agree with maintenance type work at MW, but it is that way.) They also have the authority after a period of employment, to contract out work they are unable to do.

The On-Site managers are the backbone of the property management company, and the actual success fixtures of the business. In the corporate office, you have a couple of floors full of desks, and people who stare into computers, and dress in "business casual". These, of course, are the people who post the rents and deal with all the cough and jerk stuff from USDA-Rural Development, HUD, The banks, the finance companies, the government, etc, etc. Then on another level are the managing agents. Each managing agent will have up to around 15 properties. Then you have the VP's and finally the president of the company.
The managing agents have the responsibility to either hire On-Sites, send someone else from another property to run the property, or run the property his/herself (Good luck on the latter!) The corporate office is well overstaffed, but this is necessary. There is always a "new" thing coming around, or compliance issue, or just another letter to write proving we do/did or will, in the future, do better.
All these corporate employees should first receive baptism as an On-Site, and a lot of them have. Some have not. Another job of the corporate is to send out some nasty grams to the On-Sites chiding them for late rents, vacancies, and when the next Staff Infection (oops I mean "Inspection") will be held. Also we need a few desks down there to quote "book, chapter, and verse" when someone drags a foot over the "Fair Housing Laws" or the "Americans with Disabilities Act".

So, Jen you got more than you wanted on my answer, and your probably sound asleep by now, that is the view from my window!!
Cheers.

AS POSTED ON THE LINKEDIN THREAD:

@Jen- This question requires a complex analysis and is affected by how each property allocates maintenance work, i.e., outsourced/contract labor or in-house staff.

We have 346 apartments and townhomes. For the past couple of years we've assigned work for our five person full-time maintenance staff as follows: one maintenance person is assigned to customer service requests ("SRs"), one person is assigned to cleaning about 15,000 square feet of hallways weekly and valet trash/recyclables pickup, two persons are assigned to vacancy prep, and finally, a working maintenance supervisor who also coordinates vacany prep and most projects. Painting and vacancy prep cleaning is performed by contract labor.

When vacancy prep is at its peak in the summer, we have two options: first, since the hallway cleaning + valet trash/recyclables pickup tasks require fewer skills than vacancy prep, we can more easily temporarily fill that spot with a temporary maintenance person and reposition that permanent staff person who has the necessary skills for vacancy prep; second, while we outsource painting, we've trained our painting contractor to perform much of the vacancy prep work tasks, and we can draw upon that contractor in a pinch. Since this contractor has many years of experience with our business, the contractor understands our prep methods and quality expectations (Deming principle #4).

Clearly, while there is a cost to this "added" work, there is an even higher cost to either failing to have apartments prepped for leasing or compromising the quality of the vacancy prep. In particular, compromising the quality of the vacancy prep passes onto new customers defects in their homes, i.e., future SRs), which will negatively affect customer retention (Deming principle #5; also google "Deming+Poka-Yoke").

Rick Hevier
Richard Hevier
[email protected]

AS POSTED ON THE LINKEDIN THREAD, SLIGHTLY MODIFIED:

Customer service requests (SRs) should not be outsourced; they should be performed in-house for several good reasons. Firstly, we carefully select the person who performs SRs, because that person becomes the "face" of our property, with perhaps more customer interaction than any other member of our staff. Secondly, the person specializing in customer service is continually trained in the particular methods for positive interaction and outcomes with customers (Deming principle #6, #13).

Two of our five staff members live on the property and perform our on-call "Anything Anytime 24/7/365" same day customer service, i.e., a customer can call for any kind of service request at anytime. Also, because we constantly ask for SRs whenever we talk to our customers, we generate much of the approx. 2,500 SRs we perform annually. However, the outcome is highly rewarding - the NAA estimates that the average industry turnover rate of customers is 60%, but over the past 15 years we've averaged about 28% and last year dipped to about 20%. This means we lose fewer customers and have fewer vacant apartments to prep.

Is managing this level of service challenging? Yes - and there are times we screw up. There are several redundancy approaches we take to try to minimize "screw ups" and improve service. First, before the maintenance staff is dispatched each morning, the PM discusses the SRs from the previous day since SRs often provide service training opportunities and help reinforce our service expectations (Deming principles #5, #6, #7). Second, the PM can review SRs in real time - our customers leave a voice message for their SR, which is then transcribed by a third-party service with the text transcription delivered to the PMs iPhone by text alert and iPhone app. The advantage of a voice message system is that we have a calling tree "redundancy", which increases the likelihood of a timely response from someone on the calling tree 24/7/365. Third, if an SR can't be performed "same-day" the person performing the SR contacts the PM before the work day is over, so that the PM can help troubleshoot issues causing a delay in service. Fourth, we have another procedure such that if an SR is a second request for service, then the MS takes personal charge of the SR, and if it is a third request for service, the PM takes personal charge of the SR. Then these added SRs are evaluated to figure out how to keep them from happening again (Deming principle #5, #6, #7; also google "Deming+Poka-Yoke").

Under our management approach, the PM is highly focused on customer service, whether through SRs or other customer issues. Better customer service results in better customer retention, and keeping more customers is the best kind of "leasing". Further, better customer retention results in more customer referrals, and it is generally recognized that word-of-mouth customer referrals are the least costly form of marketing with the best conversion rate when compared to other methods of "new" leasing. Word-of-mouth referrals from our past and current customers end up resulting in about 25% of our new leasing. What would any property owner rather be doing - Anything Anytime 24/7/365 customer service with higher levels of customer retention and word-of-mouth-referrals, or two to three times more new leasing and vacancy prep? Over the long run, which is more costly?

Rick Hevier
Richard Hevier
[email protected]

AS POSTED ON THE LINKEDIN THREAD, SLIGHTLY MODIFIED:

I realize that it is a common practice in our industry for property owners to have the office staff manage customer service requests (SRs). I would like to suggest a different approach. Some years ago I was analyzing how to free up more time for our office staff so that they could put more focus on rental inquiries and prospect followup ("new" leasing). I was also looking for ways to improve customer maintenance service. I arrived at the conclusion that shifting the vast majority of SRs from the office to the maintenance staff made sense for a multitude of reasons. First, moving the management of SRs from the office to maintenance staff eliminated the "middleman" layer of bureaucracy for our customers to receive service and provided a more streamlined experience for our customers by dealing directly with the maintenance staff. Second, it freed up a lot of office time for our office leasing staff so that they could focus on inquiries and followup. Third, it provided a more logical division of "leasing". In other words, let the maintenance staff focus on better customer maintenance service and thus, better customer retention "leasing", with the daily leadership of the PM and MS. Let the office staff focus on "new" leasing.

In order to achieve the shifting of SRs from the office to the maintenance staff, we work hard to train our customers to use our separate customer service phone number with its voice message system, rather than calling the office for customer service. And, as I noted in my previous post, these voice messages for customer service can be managed in real time by the PM because the text transciptions are sent by text and app to the iPhone. Since we have assigned one of our maintenance staff persons the task of performing work day SRs, that person and the MS can also monitor customer service voice messages. In my previous post I also pointed out how our redundancy system can help in performing customer service.

Rick Hevier
Richard Hevier
[email protected]