When I transitioned into a Customer Success role, I did so because I was passionate about creating solid relationships with my customers and doing everything I could to make sure that our software was helping their company become wildly successful. I imagine that most of you are in the multifamily industry because of similar reasons—you thrive on the fact that you are able to create relationships with your residents and that you are able to impact their lives in a significant way by finding a home for them and their families. It’s a great feeling.

Conversely, when we lose a customer or a resident because we weren’t able to make the software or our property work effective for them, it’s a sinking feeling of failure. It’s a big punch to the gut. It rarely feels good.

In Customer Success, we are always thinking of tools and indicators to help us be better prepared to know when a customer is at risk or even leaving our platform. However, we focus on a number of different things to help ensure the customer achieves success from the very beginning so that our customers never show up on any of these reports. Here are our areas of focus and how they apply to you:

Smooth Implementation

It can be difficult on a customer and their staff to switch from a new software to ours and we are very aware of that. One of the ways that we ensure success is to do everything we can to make sure that the roll-out of our product is as seamless and easy as possible.

The same is true with your residents - moving can be difficult and stressful. Thinking about moving your entire house up three flights of stairs will cause you to pull your hair out. Not to mention that trying to locate where the packing tape starts and ends on that roll of tape is enough to get you committed.

What are you doing to help guarantee that your residents are having a seamless and easy move-in process?

Effective Training

Once a customer is set up, we provide them an in-depth training to ensure that they are familiar with our platform and how to properly navigate it.

What about your residents? Do they know everything that is available to them at your property? Are they aware of the great Italian restaurant around the corner? What about the wonderful dry cleaner just down the street?

How effective is your “training” for new residents? What’s missing from your “training”?

Stability

As our customers start using our platform every day, they will likely encounter an issue with our software. Our jobs are to try to prevent issues from happening or to resolve them as fast as possible, and the same holds true for all of you in your roles.

If you are currently tracking issues at your community, start focusing on the popular ones and begin strategizing on how you can prevent them from recurring in the future. Have your properties set goals on how quickly they should be responding to and solving a resident’s issue.

The fewer issues that a resident has and the faster the issues get solved will provide a greater resident experience.

Best Practices

We LOVE to share all of the best and effective ways that our customers should be utilizing our platform. These best practices can have a massive impact on our customers and their own goals.

What about your residents? Have you let your residents know that they can pay their rent or submit a work order online? Do they know that they can receive a friendly rent reminder each month via a text message or email? Do everything you can to provide your residents with an effortless experience. This will pay huge dividends and result in happier residents.

Adoption

Lastly, our team focuses on getting our customers to use and adopt our products. Of course, the more that a customer uses our software and realizes the huge value that it provides, the less likely they are to cancel our services. The more your residents utilize your property and its amenities, the more “sticky” your property becomes and the less likely they are to move elsewhere. Are you doing a good enough job of marketing your amenities? Do your residents know that you have a pretty stellar gym with a gorgeous view of the city? What about your concierge service? What amenities are missing from your property that could help a resident better “adopt” your property or community?

There’s a lot to consider when it comes to making your residents truly “successful”. Start focusing on one area that you know you have the greatest room for improvement and go from there.

Have some great suggestions on how to make your residents successful? We’d love to hear them—please leave your ideas in the comments section below.

By: Blake Webster