Lisa Trosien from http://www.apartmentexpert.com/ had an excellent post in her blog http://www.apartmentmarketingblog.com/?p=300 this week regarding the Ground Swell and Resident Retention. The Groundswell is one of the best books I have read in a while, and Lisa’s candid commit about “What do companies do that aren’t very good at customer service. My answer is they won’t do anything; they haven’t done anything for years and years and have still made a fortune in this business. And, that covers the vast majority of apartments. They won’t do anything because they don’t know what to do and second, they don’t think they have to, which is why we have, what I coin as Apartment Commodity. There are certainly some very progressive and excellent property management companies that do get it and are executing on the residents experience and customer service, however they are the minority. Apartment property management is significantly antiquated.
I am pretty passionate about the whole social web site stuff and the fact that the customer, the Resident will be heard, but this is all viewed as a radical approach, and maybe it is, for now, but Will it become mainstream, sooner as opposed to later. What If it did, and What if the whole way in which residents leased apartments was based on their Experience, No way you say, well I challenge you to answer, Did anyone ask your permission to stop full service gas stations, Did anyone ask your permission if it was OK to not carry your groceries out to your trunk, Did anyone ask your permission if it was OK to change from records to eight tracks, from eight tracks to cassettes and from cassettes to CD’s and now, throw all of those out, music is invisible, it disappeared altogether, it is in ether land!
Maybe we all should wake up pay attention to what is going on, and embrace the change and be part of the revolution.