If you have been around multifamily property management for any bit of time, you’ve experienced this. The door is already open. You stop at the threshold anyway, knock twice, and call out, “Maintenance, okay to come in?” Or some variation.
Seems trivial, but it’s worth talking about. Residents notice the small stuff. Months later, they mention it to a friend while recommending the community, and the friend signs a lease.
Every service request ends at someone’s front door. Sometimes we see it as a unit number. Every time, the resident sees their home. And how your team crosses that line tells the resident which one you see.
The entry also carries most of the risk. A tech who walks in unannounced can startle a resident, interrupt something private, or end up in a complaint where it’s one word against another. Knocking and announcing protects everyone, including the tech. Your lease and state law already set the notice rules for entry, and a protocol covers everything the law leaves to you.
Make the protocol the same at every door:
- Knock and announce, even when the door is open or the resident left a note saying to come in.
- Confirm the job before starting: “I’m here for the kitchen sink. Anything else I should look at while I’m here?”
- Protect the space. Put on shoe covers, lay a drop cloth under the work, and move nothing of theirs without asking.
- Leave a note saying what you did, what’s still open, and how to reach you.
Then check it. Join your technicians on three entries this month, watch for each step, and afterward ask the tech what the resident saw first.
Residents remember how your team treated their home long after they’ve forgotten which part got replaced, and that memory follows them to the renewal decision.
Train your team to enter every home the way they’d want a stranger to enter theirs. — Mike Brewer
Discussion Prompt: What does a resident see in the first ten seconds of your team’s entry into their home, and which step of the protocol would change that most?