Property Managers: Tips for Improving Your After-Hours Maintenance Hotline
While it is all to easy to contact a property management answering service or live answering services company and hang up an after-hours maintenance hotline, ensuring it truely does work well for you plus your tenants needs a much more effort. Below are many ways you can follow to ensure that you are doing everything it is possible to to obtain the most out of the service whilst your tenants happy. 1. Personalize the service around possible The default property management script that your call center provider dons file will get the task done, yet it's always better to personalize it to match your business. For example, the default way that operators answer the product may be “Thank you for calling, may I enable you to?” Instead of leaving this the way it is, modify it to feature the naming of your premises and also the purpose of the fishing line, like “Thank you for calling Forest Pines Condominiums after-hours maintenance hotline, may I enable you to?” It's a minor change, nonetheless it makes people more at ease realizing that they're calling your dedicated line. Or, as an illustration, in the event the hotline is going to be useful for apartments that are all within the same building and have the same address, be sure operators only request the apartment number. It's annoying being required to provide your complete address when all that's needed is the quantity. This goes for properties within the same City and State, as well. No need to seek advice that you just may have learned the solution to. 2. Clearly communicate to tenants what constitutes a crisis Your tenants ought to know precisely what is considered a crisis by your company and what isn't. Unfortunately, property managers often give criteria on their call center although not tenants, causing a large amount of heated conversations. Instead of just giving your tenants lots to call after office hours, provide them with a similar set of emergencies that you give your live answering services company and tell them after that lead to an after-hours maintenance visit and after that hold to the office. Alternatively, it is possible to scrap the listing of emergencies altogether, instead depending upon an issue that asks the tenant if they feel their situation is urgent and requirements attention before regular office hours. The potential for abuse here is obvious, but it's definitely a more customer friendly approach. Ultimately, only you are able to decide what exactly is best for your situation, but either approach works well if everyone is properly educated. 3. Stick to property management kew or prepare your answering services company to field additional types of calls Understandably, having the capability to forward your lines to the after-hours service whenever you want is sometimes too alluring to pass up. If you're likely to leave any office or stop taking calls during your regular business hours, be sure that your particular answering services company is prepared to handle the different varieties of calls that they will likely be receiving. It's harmful to business to push callers in a live answering services company that can't a single thing for them and it has no information regarding what's happening in the office. By contacting your call center and telling them what your schedule is then when you will end up out, they've got additional information to deliver callers and become more confident handling your calls. In addition, the scripting and instructions they follow ought to be befitting sort of calls they're taking and what they are telling callers. As an illustration, while it's perfectly acceptable after-hours to see a caller using a non-urgent concern to call back the following day, it's ineffective and confusing to become told that at 1 within the afternoon on the Thursday. Call centers can certainly create variable scripting, so ensure that you just you can keep them accomplish that. “The office is out to lunch currently, but I can ask someone to return your call when they reunite this afternoon” is a bit more appropriate. 4. Take advantage of the extra services, functionality, and technology that your answering services company has available Today's telemarketing companies tend to be advanced as opposed to simple message taking services that came before them. Sometimes just going for a message and delivering it properly 's all that's needed, nevertheless, you need to look in the additional features and technology that the live answering services company has available in order to discover if there's more they might be doing in your case. If so, you will find there's good possibility any additional service will enhance the effectiveness of the call center and improve the amount of customer service they're able to supply. Examples more services include payment processing, scheduling showings for your benefit, and integrating with your CRM or database so that you can look-up tenant information easier and automatically create work tickets in your system. Whether these facilities sound right in your case often depend on your size as well as the investment had to contain the technology configured. When deciding whether or not to spend any additional money, make sure to factor within the time it will take one to perform certain tasks, whether the changes will reduce or increase your payment (by increasing or reducing call times), and whether having a far more advanced live answering services company will assist you to decrease vacancies and improve the relationship you might have with existing tenants. I hope these pointers you could make your call center experiences more prosperous. If you're working having a reputable live answering services company and perhaps they are doing everything they can on his or her end, third , list should be all that you should result in the relationship a success. If you've got any feedback on utilizing an answering service /call center with your premises management operation, I'd want to know what you think. Whether your relationship was a hit or possibly a complete disaster, I always find it advantageous to schedule an appointment people and learn more about precisely what is working and what isn't.