Why good tenant communication is good business

Property managers work hard to attract new business and onboard owners. Then, they work hard to fill vacancies and lease out units. But why is it that poor communication continues to be a top complaint costing property managers business? It's time for property management companies to prioritize communication as a core business strategy.

The impact of communication on your business

A study by Fourandhalf revealed that the top two complaints in property owner reviews: communication (one out of two negative reviews mention this) and customer service (40% of negative reviews). For context, these top two ranked far above complaints about fees, property condition, maintenance, and rental marketing.

NARPM's recent benchmarking study found that the average property management company loses 1/5 units a year—19.5%. That means in order to grow, every year you need to be adding far more than 20% in unit count.

Balance all of this with shifting customer expectations. Tenants are more empowered and less patient than ever before. They can track exactly where their food delivery is to the block; but when it comes to the largest recurring expense they have—their rent—they're often still left in the dark. Last year, the National Multifamily Housing Council found that 79% of renters expect to be able to get everything they need through text or chat.

“The biggest impact on renewals continues to be the communication between residents and onsite teams.”
- Tony Sousa, VP of Operations, RPM Living

Effective communication: the right tools for the job

Spoiler alert: The answer is not a resident portal! How many times do you have to say "please log it into the portal" a day? This points to a fast-growing trend to meet tenants where they are. Increasingly, that's text message, but in property management there will always be a need for email and the phone, too.

And that's the rub. It's understandable why property managers want everything in a portal—communications come at managers from all directions, and it's critical to have a strong paper trail. Your owners want to be able to reach you directly. Tenants want immediate responses. Emergencies will come up. Email inboxes and voicemail boxes are overflowing. How do you stay on top of it all?

That's where technology comes in. With the latest AI technology like Super, you can:

• Centralize all communications from emails and text messages to phone calls.
• Maintain one paper trail for all communications types from within your email inbox.
• Organize communications by type and urgency.
• Automatically assign communications to the right person.
• Identify and escalate emergencies immediately.
• And the big one: respond and triage to all communications right away.

Being responsive, and meeting your customers where they are (not the other way around) is the foundation of a great customer experience.

But having the right tools for your team is critical for a great employee experience. When employees are empowered to do their jobs well, then the level of service improves across the board. By eliminating the busywork of responding to common, repetitive inquiries through AI, it serves to both improve the resident's satisfaction—they just got an answer in minutes!—as well as create more bandwidth for your team to focus on the highly value-added work.

Communication and automation tools that integrate with email and the phone has long been the missing link in property management. Ready to take control of your resident communications? Look no further than the AI front desk assistant at Super.

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