Pub. 6 2021 Issue 1

5 ISSUE 1, 2021 Review 1: A Frightening Lack of Follow-Through Review 2: Ghosting The Resident I t happens to even the best property managers — the occasional stinging online review. Sometimes, the resident is justified in their complaint, and it’s up to you to make things right. But many times, the review contains false information, or the resident is confused about the facts of the situation. These misleading reviews also tend to be highly emotional, expressing the resident’s anger about their perceived negative experience. Regardless of which type of negative review you’ve received, the best thing you can do is respond promptly, fix the issue, if possible, and learn from it. In that spirit, we’ve collected four negative reviews posted online for real property management companies. Let’s take a closer look at what could have been done to prevent each issue and how you, as a property manager, could respond in each scenario to build trust with future customers and protect your business from horrifying reviews like these. Assuming that both of these residents are accurately recounting the situation, in this case, a lack of follow-up on a reported maintenance issue is the root cause of both of these bad reviews. Following up on maintenance requests can be tricky, but issues like this arise most often when you’re using an offline, pen-and-paper system to track and follow up on maintenance requests. It’s easy to lose track of an issue that a resident has reported, especially when communication with a property owner or maintenance vendors is required to resolve the issue. However, when you use online maintenance tracking tools, you can collect requests from residents in your database where no information can be lost. Within the same system, you can manage communication with the owner if approval is needed, dispatch a vendor to resolve the problem, and stay on top of communication with the resident to keep them informed every step of the way. Sometimes, it’s not always possible to immediately fix an issue, but providing communication with the resident can go a long way towards preventing negative reviews like this one. Continued on page 6