Property management companies are conduits between property owners and tenants. Whether your company specializes in commercial or residential properties, you serve as an essential bridge that ensures tenants enjoy excellent services and landlords’ great returns without the responsibility of repairs, upkeep, and marketing. One of the core reasons you need an answering service is to ensure coordinated communication and follow-ups to keep property landlords and tenants happy.

The property management business is lucrative. Unfortunately, there’s also too much competition, and only well-established companies enjoy a more significant piece of the market pie. One of the simplest ways to build your reputation is to provide impeccable customer service. Both prospective clients and tenants are likely to love working with you when their calls are answered quickly and by a live person each time they call your company. A property management answering service can give you an edge over the competition by helping you handle both inbound and outbound company calls.

Property Management Business and Call Centers Overview

Property managers and answering services companies make excellent partners. The former specializes in making life a little easier for landlords by performing the following duties:

  • Marketing rental property to prospective tenants
  • Screening out problematic tenants
  • Acting as a point of contact for tenants and ensuring their concerns are promptly addressed.
  • Ensuring landlords receive their monthly income from rent in a timely fashion
  • Managing property maintenance and repair responsibilities
  • Ensuring property owners handle their duties to avoid legal trouble

Whether you are a starting property management company or you have been in the industry for a while, there’s a good chance that you handle plenty of calls each day. While a good number of tenants and landlords call you during office hours, some may reach out after hours. Even if you have an in-house receptionist, the chances are that your company may not have the capacity to handle all incoming calls.

This is where a property management answering service comes in. companies like Best Call Center have highly trained operators that can process all calls based on their urgency and the unique needs of the caller. This will save your property management company a lot of money because you don’t have to do the following:

  • Hire and pay a whole department of receptionists to provide 24-hour answering services
  • Incur costs related to staff training
  • Invest in additional equipment for setting up an in-house call center

Call centers specialize in helping companies to handle their inbound and outbound calls. An ideal company will master the needs of your business, ensuring that agents can provide exceptional assistance to each caller. Not even your clients will know that an in-house receptionist did not pick their calls.

Partnering with a call center allows you to focus on what you do best, property management. On the other hand, the answering service agents will focus on what they do best, sprucing up your company image and enhancing your customer service performance.

10 Ways a Call Center Can Help Your Property Management Business

Letting your inbound calls roll over to voicemail can harm your business in more ways than one. For instance, property owners contemplating giving you a deal may opt to contact your competitors instead. Then again, tenants reaching out with pressing issues may decide to vacate your property in search of homes where they can receive timely assistance and feel appreciated.

A reliable call center can handle both inbound and outbound calls during office hours and after hours. Here is what to expect:

  • Inbound calls — Answering service agents provide clients with information or obtain information about concerns that need addressing.
  • Outbound calls — Agents market a property management company’s services, provide information to potential clients, or conduct surveys as part of customer retention campaigns.

Note that all calls are recorded for quality assurance purposes. This allows a company to closely monitor how an answering service handles its customers and track errors or identify areas where more effective counseling strategies may come in handy.

Here are unique ways a call center can benefit your property management business:

Maximize the Productivity of Your In-House Team

Your in-house team should be busy closing deals and managing existing clients’ properties. Unfortunately, they may not focus on what you pay them to do if they are constantly interrupted by calls from tenants. Enlisting call center services designates the work of collecting tenant messages to an outsourced team.

It is often impossible for one in-house receptionist to handle all inbound and outbound calls, capture leads, and forward urgent calls to different personnel in one day. An answering service can provide reliable solutions and ensure that your company can operate 24/7 as leasing agents, a tenant complaint department, and building maintenance coordinators with more ease.

Don’t Miss Out on Business Deals

A property management call center has agents to serve both existing and prospective clients. By providing unrivaled quality customer service, you increase your chances of closing more business deals. Moreover, excellent customer service can enhance your reputation, affording you a seat at the table of well-established property management companies within your area.

A good reputation increases your chances of receiving referrals and closing the best deals from various commercial and residential property owners. After all, they will want to benefit from your ability to effectively manage their properties and keep reliable tenants comfortable for years.

Manage Tenant Expectations

Property managers handle a whole range of tasks each day. They serve as sales consultants, maintenance coordinators, rent collections agents, and a listening ear to any tenant with concerns that need addressing. The worst part is that as a manager handles one task, two more equally urgent tasks may pile up, one after the other. The number of duties the experts take at any given time can wreak havoc on their ability to manage their time.

Customer service is always at its best when each tenant feels heard and appreciated immediately they air a concern. Hiring an answering service can lighten your property managers’ load and keep all the tenants happy. The specialist can help create a work calendar listed with tasks in order of their priority.

Most importantly, call center agents to work according to the instructions given by your company. This lets them dish out crucial information to prospective tenants, dispatch maintenance personnel to handle urgent repairs, and even schedule showings. A solid partnership between property managers and call center agents reduces the inconvenience of a disorganized work calendar.

Address Maintenance Concerns

Managing maintenance issues is one of the primary ways to address tenants’ expectations. As aforementioned, you can instruct answering service agents to dispatch maintenance personnel whenever necessary. All you have to do is provide a detailed process of evaluating maintenance or repair concerns.

Unlike routine maintenance concerns that can wait, emergency repairs may need to be handled with the urgency they deserve. Using the proposed criteria, the answering agents can interpret various problems and decide whether to reach out to your repair contractors or deliver the information to you to be dealt with at a later date.

Generally, you can expect each maintenance concern to receive the level of attention it deserves. By picking the tenant’s calls with concerns, you send the message that you care and are always ready to help. You send an even stronger message when tenants are assured of receiving reliable assistance, whether they call after hours, during the weekends, or on holiday.

Maintain a Great Company Image

It’s almost impossible for any business to operate without glitches all year round. Sometimes, you have to deal with a short-staffed department, a sick employee, or even have to close your office for the weekend or holidays. Again, a property management answering service will come in handy and provide the much-needed backup.

Your clients and tenants don’t need to suffer when your team is tied up elsewhere. The answering service agents will still be at work 24/7/365 to ensure all your client needs are met. Generally, this sets you up as a reliable company and gives you a masculine image in the eyes of your clientele and the tenants you manage.

Provide After-Hours Services

Operating a property management business round the clock can take a significant toll on your bottom line. However, this doesn’t necessarily mean that potential tenants should reach the answering machine when they call after hours. Note that most people looking for commercial space will often ring you outside the regular business hours.

Ensuring that you pick all calls increases your odds of keeping property owners happy with fully-occupied buildings. Trained answering agents are just as good as your in-house team and can answer all the basic questions about different properties. They can also schedule a showing when one of your property managers takes prospective tenants for a visit around the available units.

Save Time and Money

Trained answering agents can do so much more than simply provide basic information about the properties you manage. They can also close sales and direct clients through the proper channels of paying for space. Most importantly, they can save you time by scheduling showings when your work calendar is free and canceling the appointments of prospects that are no longer interested.

It is no surprise that missing calls equals losing business or incurring unnecessary expenses. With a team of skilled call center agents in your corner, you don’t have to worry about missing a sale or losing a reliable tenant over a concern you have failed to address in a timely fashion. Note that if your company cannot provide satisfactory customer service, there’s a good chance your clients will move on to your competitors.

Quickly Resolve Tenant Issues

The beauty of hiring property managers is that they can focus on tenants and meet their needs when the landlord is out on vacation or tied up with other errands. Nothing keeps the tenants of a building happier than knowing that they can receive an immediate response whenever they have an issue of concern.

Whether it is a maintenance issue or a concern that requires emergency repairs, call center agents will have what it takes to provide invaluable assistance. They can ensure that a problem is addressed quickly by helping a tenant through the proper chain of command. Furthermore, the agents will document each issue and conduct follow-ups, ensuring that tenant requests don’t fall through the cracks.

Hold Tenant Outreach Campaigns

Waiting passively for inquiries is not always good enough. Sometimes, it pays to be a little more proactive and conduct surveys to learn more about tenant satisfaction. This gives the impression that you value the people who lease the properties you manage. It is also true that property managers who show responsiveness tend to have more tenants willing to renew their leasing contracts.

To make the most out of your contract with a property management answering service, make sure you describe your needs in detail. Apart from lending a hand with customer service, call centers can also aid with sales processes and customer retention campaigns. Your partnership with the right experts could see your business expand its profit margins.

Take Full Advantage of Referrals

Bad reviews often spread faster than good reviews. People are inclined to save their friends from bad experiences and will usually not hesitate to post their ordeals on social media platforms. On the other hand, the best form of advertising is word of mouth. You can increase your odds of enjoying referrals by ensuring your tenants can commend your quality of customer service.

Referrals will not do you any good if you cannot pick all your calls. Again, a call center service ensures that prospective tenants and existing ones are greeted by a live person each time they call. This is irrespective of whether they call to schedule a showing over the weekend or during odd hours of the night.

Find a Property Management Answering Service Near Me

Property managers have to wear many hats on any given day. For instance, on a typical Monday morning, a manager may have to cover the sales office, follow up on rent payments, take a prospective tenant on a house tour, renew a lease agreement, and the list of tasks to handle is endless. Juggling all these tasks as the phone rings off the hook can create a chaotic work environment and toy with your team’s productivity levels. Best Call Center can provide reliable solutions if you need help handling your inbound and outbound calls. Call us today at 800-385-4656 and let us help you choose a plan that works beautifully for your business needs and objectives.