Our guest post today comes to us from Lisa Zagoren, property manager at Oak Park Apartments – managed by Mills Properties in St. Louis Missouri. Lisa also serves as a blogger at Real Life STL, a blog focused around über cool neighborhood-centric conversation.
In my travels as a property manager, I’ve come across some really crazy, bizarre, funny, sad (you get the picture) things. I read a blog post the other day that reminded me of how $5 could cost you a resident, which in turn costs you thousands in vacancy, make ready expense, advertising, etc., which brings me to this post….The Apartments Doormat.
I have a crazy, over-the-top, insane property consisting of 756 units. My resident services side team deals with a lot of negativity on a daily basis. As you can imagine, it’s hard to keep them positive at times, when everyone around them is so negative. They get called names (really bad names that I can’t put in this post). They get threatened. They get spat at.
Do You Care
I had a resident give the resident services team her notice to vacate last week. During the resident’s tenancy, her doormat was stolen not once, but three times. When she came to the office to inform us, we were apparently not that empathetic to her situation. We basically stated, sorry, there is nothing we can do.
According to my resident, there were things we could have done. We could have been empathetic; “I am so sorry that this happened to you Ms. Jones. Is there anything you can think of that we can do to try to prevent this from happening again”? My resident also stated in her letter, why did we not put a notice in the hallway stating someone is stealing doormats and to call management if they know who is doing this or just keep an eye out for each other in the building, because we put notices in the hallway for everything else. Everything that’s important to management, but not necessarily important to the residents.
Lesson learned. Had I known of my residents situation, I probably would have bought her a new door mat ($10), apologized empathetically, and would have saved a notice to vacate that I had no idea I would get over stolen doormats.
I know my resident services team deals with a lot of negativity and stress on a daily basis. I get that. I just need to constantly remind them of the “one” resident that is not like that and they need to be treated with respect and be empathetic when they have an issue that is serious to them.
We all need to be cognitive of how the day-to-day stressors can affect us. This one notice will cost me thousands in vacancy, turn over expense, advertising, etc.
Your property manager point of view for the day….
0 Responses
Definitely agree with Lisa we should be a little more empathetic with residents but I also think that she probably would have moved anyway but if buying a $10 door mat would have made her stay then why not its really nothing compared to other situations we have day to day
I know this is not the point of this post…but stealing doormats? Really? What is the point in that? Ok, moving on – Great post Lisa! Sometimes we just need a quick reminder of the industry we are in. This reminder was a bummer for OP, but a learning experience none-the-less.
I totally agree with you Lisa. There are so many minor things that the team
can do for a resident that will make such a difference. Just the tone of voice
that you use can change an upset person’s whole demeanor (which means putting
on the sad face even though you know that the issue is probably not that big). We are in a business of customer service and unfortunately
it is a service that never ends. If we
really want people to “ believe in where they live” we have to show that we do
to, which means that if they are calling about a burnt out light bulb, we make
sure that it is changed, or if they have noisy neighbor then we address that
resident ASAP. I think that a huge
problem is the sense of urgency needs to be present, if there is a problem than
we need to convey that it is a priority even though it might be minor, like a
stolen door matt.
Thank you for the comments! That letter was just a reminder of how we can get complacent and I sincerely hope it reignites the passion we all have to strive for awesome customer service. 🙂