The Perfect Property

Four Ways To Improve Communication Through Tenant Services

by Zachary Thompson

Whether you're a property manager or a landlord, you may find that tenant services account for a significant portion of your day. To provide the best experience for your tenants, you need to be able to deliver timely and effective communication. Here are a few ways to improve your communication and keep your tenants happy.

1. Create a Tenant Portal

A tenant portal is a website that allows tenants to connect with you easily. They can open maintenance tickets, request more information, or simply pay their bills. A tenant portal serves two purposes: it makes it easier for tenants to contact you and it provides a reliable paper trail so that you can follow up on issues and review them as necessary. Your tenant portal can even provide a direct contact to your maintenance and administration team so that you don't need to disseminate information yourself. 

2. Use Satisfaction Surveys

Every time an issue has been resolved, you can survey your tenants regarding whether the issue was resolved to their satisfaction. This will give you information regarding whether the servicing was completed in a timely fashion and whether the issues were fully resolved. Otherwise you may never know about issues because the tenant may never complain to you directly.

3. Provide Specific Points of Contact

Ideally, your tenants should know exactly who to call for billing issues, plumbing services, maintenance problems, and other specialized issues. By empowering tenants with contact information, you give them more control over the situation -- and you create less work for yourself. As long as your points of contact are trustworthy, many issues should be able to be resolved outside of your own direct supervision.

4. Be Proactive

Keeping your tenants informed is critical to smoothing over issues. Whether there's a scheduled water outage or renovations being done in common spaces, it's important that you let your tenants know immediately. A mailing list system in addition to physical mailers can create a reliable communication system for your tenants. Updating your tenants early gives you the opportunity to address any of their concerns quickly, before they become issues. 

When in doubt, you can always ask your tenants exactly what they need from you in order to feel as though they are valued and being taken care of. By improving your tenant services, you improve your tenant happiness -- and by improving tenant happiness, you can also ensure that your properties are well taken care of. Talk to companies like Two Rivers Investment for more ideas.

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