Striving for an excellent customer experience is becoming a ubiquitous strategy in almost every industry — and real estate and property management are no exception.
Striving for an excellent customer experience is becoming a ubiquitous strategy in almost every industry — and real estate and property management are no exception.
Many residential and commercial property owners are embracing the idea of “tenant experience” as a key priority. They aim to provide a premium experience that tenants want to pay for.
After all, keeping tenants happy is simply good business: Satisfied tenants stay longer, increase the total occupancy of properties, and are a great source of word-of-mouth referrals.
A new class of technology — tenant experience software — has emerged to help property owners and managers oversee and elevate the tenant experience. However, there’s one piece missing in many tenant experience platforms: field service tracking.
Here, we’ll take a look at what this software does, how field service tracking can take it to the next level, and the benefits of field service tracking for property managers.
What does tenant experience software do?
Tenant experience is a broad category of software, and it offers advantages for both tenants and property managers.
Different platforms may include features like:
- Scheduling the use of amenities such as conference rooms, event spaces, EV charging stations, or concierge services
- Visitor registration and parking permissions
- Secure mobile access to buildings, parking garages, and other restricted spaces
- Security alerts and procedure notifications
- Billing management to pay rent and utilities bills through an app
- A tenant communication app that provides a direct line to property management staff
Perhaps most importantly, tenant experience software often offers a digital maintenance portal.
Requesting and receiving timely repairs and maintenance is an age-old sticking point for both tenants and property managers. Tenant experience software streamlines this process by allowing tenants to make maintenance requests from their phones or computers and offering them improved visibility with status updates.
Field service tracking takes tenant experience to the next level.
For better or worse, maintenance is one of the biggest influencers of the tenant experience — and the day of service is particularly crucial.
It’s hard to overstate just how much negative maintenance experiences can affect tenant satisfaction.
- 40% of customers say they experience stress and anxiety while waiting for service technicians
- 13% have been forced to cancel plans to accommodate a service appointment
- 11% have experienced disrupted sleep
- 7% don’t feel comfortable stepping away even just to use the toilet
Luckily, property managers can overcome these challenges using field service customer engagement technology like real-time technician tracking, accurate and continuously updated ETAs, and two-way communication.
And the relief this technology can provide is immense:
- 53% of customers say they’d feel relief simply from being able to track the location of their service technician on an app or website.
- 72% report they would greatly benefit from being able to directly communicate with their service technician
Tracking means tenants can actually see, in real time, the technician’s location on a map, and receive accurate, updated ETAs. Field service customer engagement software also enables two-way communication with service technicians, cutting out the need for tenants to call the property management office.
Most tenant experience platforms don’t include field service tracking by default. However, field service customer engagement technology can be layered on top of tenant experience software to maximise tenant satisfaction.
Benefits of field service tracking for property managers
When tenants have visibility into their service appointment and a direct line of communication with their technician, it elevates the tenant experience — and, in turn, boosts your bottom line.
Field service tracking software has many advantages for property managers and owners on the operations side, too.
A few major benefits include:
- A reduction in no-access appointments
- A reduction in tenants calling the office for technician ETAs
- Streamlining technicians’ work days so they can serve more tenants more efficiently
