Being a property manager can be a daunting job. You’re often juggling countless priorities from tenant desires, needs, and emergencies to tenant retention and everything that arises along the way to create value for your property management company. Tenants can call you daily or even hourly with emergencies they want to be addressed as soon as yesterday or want to know if they are being heard, and their problems are being resolved. If you’re managing several locations with tens of thousands of clients, dealing with all these matters can be overwhelming.
So, how do you handle these challenges productively and in a manner that satisfies the needs of everyone involved? You could add more employees to your team to alleviate workload but working with a professional property management answering service is better. Here is why it’s more beneficial to work with an answering service for your property management business.
24/7 Telephone Answering
If your company relies on an automated voicemail system instead of one specializing in the company and clients’ needs, you are already at a loss. If you invest in an answering service, your clients’ calls will never go to voicemail. The service offers a reliable and professional telephone presence that’s available 24/7 to meet the existing and prospective clients’ needs. This establishes a strong foundation to build your customer service and reputation.
You'll Have Staff Back-Up
To satisfy both tenants and landlords, you need to do different tasks at a go. A typical day on the job may include apartment showing, screening prospective tenants, and vendor meetings. Whereas you can manage to answer your fair share of incoming calls, you may not always be available to answer each time a phone call comes in.
You may opt to let the calls go to voicemail (which, it bears repeating, isn't in the interest of your business) or entrust phone answering to your staff. However, when your staff is spread too thin, it may fail to undertake phone duties effectively. That is where a property management answering service comes in. With phone calls handled, you and your staff will have more time to attend to more urgent tasks on your to-do lists.
After Hours Service
Usually, calls from tenants and prospects come in after office hours when you’ve closed up for the day. An answering service can prolong your business hours to around-the-clock coverage. It can provide various features such as appointment scheduling, after-hours call answering, call overflow management, and many others.
Ensure you utilize the answering service's capability to provide varying scripts to accommodate every situation. You can change these scripts whenever you want, so you can also use this feature when away on vacations, holidays, or attending important family events.
Irrespective of whether you run a commercial or residential property management company, the more info you share with your answering agents, the more integrated you'll become. The outcome is a more efficient company, which can promptly respond to potential and existing tenant needs. Not only does this improve property management communication, but it also significantly improves the company's bottom line.
Share Community News and Reminders Effortlessly
Some tenants pay their monthly rent on time. Others need a little push. Answering agents can help you remind tenants about upcoming deadlines for rent payment. Tenants may not always adhere to reminders, but you will at least be at peace knowing due diligence was done.
A property management answering service can provide other information and updates to your community as well. You’ll be able to easily alert residents to upcoming events, policy changes, and pet waste or parking reminders. Build reminders into a customized call script, and answering agents will take care of the rest. It has never been easier to keep the whole community on the same page.
Maintain a Flow of Prospective Tenants
Large HOAs and rentals are in an almost constant state of flux. There is always a tenant moving in, moving out, or hoping to move one way or another. Maintaining a continuous flow of potential tenants is the key to a successful property management firm, but you need so much workforce to achieve that. There is always something to do when minimizing vacancies. Talk of screening applicants, collecting deposits, and marketing available property/apartments.
An answering service helps make the flow of potential clients easy to maintain. Answering agents will schedule showings with potential tenants. These agents thoughtfully set up appointments based on your availability. Doing this eliminates the phone tag that often accompanies new tenants.
Dispatch Maintenance Personnel Quickly
HVAC system failure can have tenants rising in arms. A broken pipe can cause damage worth thousands of dollars in just a few minutes. A gas leak can be extremely hazardous to all the pets and people living on a property. When there is an emergency, you don't have any options but to act fast because lives depend on it.
Unfortunately, however, dispatching maintenance personnel is not always as easy as it appears. Emergencies that arise after hours mean waking most of your staff from bed. It doesn't have to be that way. If you are working with an answering service, tenants can remain calm knowing an answering agent has responded to their predicament on time.
From there, answering agents can decide who and when to call. Highly-trained agents can familiarize themselves with your procedures and policies in advance, enabling them to make crucial decisions about what's an emergency and what isn't. Differentiating between these two is not always easy. However, making the correct decision could save your business a lot of money. As far as protecting the safety and health of properties and tenants is concerned, a property management answering service is a powerful tool.
Customer Service Improvement
Customer service is key in the world of property management. There is no second chance at a first impression. Allow a potential tenant's call to go to voicemail, and you'd have lost an invaluable lead forever. Additionally, consider that tenants do their due diligence before settling in a place. They read reviews from former and current renters before deciding. There is merely no room for mistakes as far as customer service for property management is concerned.
An answering service for property management will ensure all calls are responded to professionally and promptly. While your staff is busy conducting background checks or showing prospective renters vacant units, an answering agent will be covering the phones, talking to every caller with efficiency and expertise. You will present a more professional appearance to callers who might never realize that they are talking to a third party. This kind of customer care is what attracts good renters.
Offer Round-the-Clock Support
We have two kinds of after-hour calls— those that can wait and those demanding immediate action. Tenants will feel their phone call is important regardless of their reason for calling. And they're right. However, that does not necessarily mean you/your staff must wake up late at night to attend to them.
A good property management answering service gives renters their deserved attention regardless of when they call. If they call with an emergency, the remote answering agents will follow all your protocols and notify the relevant team immediately. Otherwise, they will themselves address the caller's needs by giving them the necessary info or taking a message for you so you can make a follow-up when you have the time. Whichever way, the caller will have the full attention of a representative, and their concerns will be heard and addressed.
Expand Your Client Base
The most progressive and prepared property management answering services have considered clients’ needs depending on the states and areas they serve to train a diverse team of answering agents. As a result, not only do they retain a suitable group of bilingual agents, but they also have different sub-group cultural understandings that can affect interaction with callers.
This will eventually enable you to serve your clients better, expanding your client base and increasing retention. The fact is that cultural sensitivity is about more than just good business. It's about good communities— both residential and commercial. These precepts will define the leading property managers as the nation grows and changes to be more diverse.
Boost Your Company's Reputation
Research has shown that over 50 percent of unhappy clients voice their complaints when they receive poor service, damaging your reputation throughout the industry. Poor customer service costs United States businesses billions of dollars. Much of this business comes through phone-based service, and common customer complaints include being placed on hold for so long and rude staff.
An answering service will eliminate these problems from your business. It will also increase market presence and consumer accessibility for your business. This will, in turn, improve your reputation industry-wide, giving you a competitive edge over rivals that are not as responsive.
Increase Positive Customer Reviews
Receiving positive online reviews isn't easy. That is because customers highly value online reviews. Research indicates that 97 percent of consumers admit that online reviews influence their buying decisions.
Increasing accessibility through top-notch telephone support removes one of the critical frustrations clients say they experience with companies while boosting customer service and satisfaction. This, in turn, will generate positive online reviews.
An Answering Service Will Generate Revenue for You When You Can't
Apart from giving out basic info, a property management answering service can do more to assist you in closing the sales and increasing revenue. As we mentioned, it can schedule showings depending on your preferences and availability or cancel them for prospective tenants who aren’t interested anymore. This saves your and your employees’ time, increasing your effectiveness and efficiency.
Avoid Lead Conversion Mistakes
In the property management industry, lead conversion narrows down to quick communication. To increase your conversion margin, you need to have a bold plan that uses every possible means to eliminate errors that can ruin a sales lead conversion.
Closing sales in property management depends on how accurate and prompt you are on follow-ups. If you're rarely in your office, it means you have to provide means to immediately receive call notifications from wherever you are and full details of the calls so you can return them when it's not too late.
An automatic answering machine is what will wipe your existence as nothing ruins a potential lead like being forced to leave voice messages to an answering machine. Whereas you may have employed an in-house receptionist, they're often busy doing other things for the company or frequently on the phone when another phone call comes through.
It's virtually always a grave mistake to allow a call to roll to voicemail. A live answering service ensures that every caller receives an informed and friendly interaction with a live voice. The answering agents’ ability to answer calls and ask the necessary questions elicits more info than the caller would've left with an automatic answering machine. As a result, these agents can assist in laying the foundation for a sale lead conversion by first being friendly and then asking questions and providing the necessary answers.
When out of the office, you may also be on the phone, juggling clients while moving from one place to another. You could also be engaged in showing vacant units. Just like your staff back at the office would possibly be committing a lead conversion error by allowing calls to roll over to voicemail, so would you when outside the office. Property management answering agents can ensure your calls are answered when you're otherwise engaged. Additionally, you can be sure the agents will make a quick follow-up phone call to you so you can promptly engage the prospective tenant.
Find a Professional Property Management Answering Service Provider Near Me
At Best Call Center, we deliver efficient call answering, accurate messages, and friendly services for property management companies across the nation. Our highly trained answering agents will screen calls per your preferred specifications. They'll make sure to prioritize urgent calls and deliver all the other calls as part of your daily summary. You can also choose the method through which you want your messages to be delivered, including through fax, text, email, or by signing into your website portal. We will also simplify your life with after-hour service and help you schedule or cancel appointments. Call us today at 800-385-4656 to work with us.