Managing an apartment comes with several challenges that must be resolved as soon as possible. Ensuring that tenants remain happy when problems arise is the greatest challenge as an apartment manager. While solving tenant issues, you should keep in mind that these are your tenants, neighbors, the income source, and the major source of business referrals. Management cannot prevent all problems from occurring. However, excellent communication is vital between you and your tenants. This is where the Best Call Center apartment answering services comes to the rescue.
With our call answering services, rest assured your tenants and prospects tenants receive quality customer service. We have years of experience helping apartment property managers nationwide and have assisted tenants without delay. Our skilled call answering agents are on standby 24/7 to respond to emergencies, answer questions, and contact the relevant staff members on your behalf. If you need to hire an answering service, do not hesitate to give us a call.
Overview of Call Answering Services in the Property Management Industry
Running an apartment property management company doesn’t only need keeping your property well-maintained, but also implies that you have to maintain a good reputation to attract & retain reliable and high-quality tenants. Should your tenants experience issues, for instance, a smoke alarm that has refused to turn off or a leaky faucet, they would want to be capable of picking up their phone and speaking with you concerning their situation, regardless of what time it is.
If, in any case, your company takes longer to return messages or respond to phone calls, your tenants may be exasperated. And within just a few minutes, the word may spread to their social platforms. However, if you keep tenants satisfied and happy, you can undoubtedly count on high-quality verbal publicity concerning your dedication to rectifying issues quickly and satisfying tenants. When tenants are content, you will be capable of filling units faster, establishing yourself as a competitive apartment property management company to potential business partners and tenants, and maintaining high market rates.
With an Apartment Property Management Answering Service, You Can Streamline the Phone Handling Process
Apartment answering services can give both you and your employees a healthier life-work balance and greater freedom. When your staff goes home after working for the whole day, the least they would want is being on call solving tenant’s problems. There are those tenants who would even call late in the night, which can be stressful for the already hardworking employees. Apartment management answering services ensure there is always a helpful and friendly voice on the line. Call answering agents will distinguish actual emergencies from matters that can wait up to the following day.
Of course, as an apartment manager, you are not only concerned about an emergency. You want to make sure that your business is operating flawlessly and profit is being maximized. In case you’ve got vacant apartments, you’ll probably not be in the office but out there, giving potential tenants a tour to look at them. Who will be answering your phone calls while you’re gone? If the calls go unanswered, it means you’re missing out on other business opportunities.
This is because most people do not like leaving voicemails. A good number will just disconnect the phone and call another apartment management company instead. With an apartment management answering service, voicemails do not exist. Callers will be treated to patient and resourceful support, be it you are out showing a prospective tenant an apartment, busy handling other duties on your list, or in a meeting.
Emergency Help and Efficient Response
Apart from the significance of keeping your tenants happy, it is also critical to keep all your tenants and properties safe. If an emergency emerges in any of your apartments, your tenants must not wait until the next day to receive assistance. Come up with a standard emergency protocol for all tenants, including calling 911 or any other emergency service and working with an apartment management answering service so the tenants will have a number to dial and report their emergencies. An answering service can assist in triaging the late-night phone calls to put you and your staff in the loop when an immediate response is needed.
For less disastrous situations, answering services for apartment managers may also enable a smoother flow of operations when a tenant calls to report a maintenance issue. Use an apartment management answering service to compile work requests, and then plan work orders with your maintenance team for the next week or day. An answering service could also help you manage the inflow of phone calls after you have listed an available apartment. Receiving well-organized inquiry reports will assist you in responding to prospective tenants equitably and faster so that you can rent out your apartments quickly and maintain full occupancy for a whole year.
How a Live Apartment Property Management Answering Service Handles Your Calls
In contrast to an automated system that forces callers to select options and hold or wait to talk to somebody, a live apartment management answering service permits anyone that calls your line to communicate with an actual person at once. The experts who respond to phone calls with live answering services are trained to deal with all types of calls, text messages, and emails that apartment managers receive.
Prospective Tenants
Sometimes, people can call your line to inquire more about a vacant unit. In a situation like this, your live answering agent’s professional character will offer numerous benefits. If you have this kind of service, you will give prospective tenants an encouraging first impression of your business. You can provide your call answering agent with all the information regarding your apartment properties and their units to have all the answers they are seeking.
Existing Tenants
A tenant may have a plumbing or electrical issue or any other problem in his/her unit and not know what to do, especially if it’s at night. This is the moment they can pick their phone and contact your answering service. The agent they are connected with will be friendly and compassionate, making sure that all the details about your tenants’ concerns are recorded correctly so that you and your staff can find solutions to them.
Appointment Scheduling
Apart from providing info, an answering service also schedules appointments for viewing vacant units. Also, when an existing tenant calls about a maintenance problem or any other issue, the call answering agent can schedule a maintenance appointment or dispatch the tenant’s call to you or any of the maintenance staff members.
What an Apartment Property Management Answering Service Can Do
An answering service is capable of achieving so much for your business, including:
Capture Leads
Each call you receive is a chance to acquire new renters as well as increase revenue. As far as lead capture is concerned, timing is a very critical factor. An answering service will answer each call within three rings or even less, and a caller will be thrilled with the immediate personal care that answering agents provide. Also, answering agents can make outbound phone calls to potential renters interested in your properties and schedule for showings using your online calendar management software.
Customized Solutions
An apartment answering service company works with you closely to generate a customized script that its agents will follow. Then, using the procedures and protocols you provide, answering agents respond to your callers’ requests just like you would have from your office.
Dispatching Services
Whether a tenant is calling with a security issue or maintenance request for a damaged light fixture or broken faucet, an answering service will dispatch the call to your on-call personnel efficiently and quickly. Employees can be contacted instantly through text, pager, email, or phone. Answering service agents can easily adjust their messaging services for any alterations in your on-call schedule.
Bilingual Customer Service
Most apartment answering service providers have staff fluent in more than one language, for instance, Spanish and English. Therefore, an answering service can assist you in expanding your reach. Also, potential renters will be confident enough in their ability to ask their questions and communicate their hopes and concerns about renting from you. When renting occurs, it becomes a win-win for everybody involved. In this diverse country, one would consider you negligent if you overlook a bilingual customer care representative’s significance.
Tips for Selecting the Best Apartment Property Management Answering Service
There is no doubt in the several benefits of hiring an answering service to take care of your apartment management phone calls. But service providers are not all the same. There could be many different providers out there. However, the best one for your business is one that has these features:
Trained and Well-Established Staff
The apartment answering service provider that’s representing your business has to be experienced and established. It should comprise a dedicated team whose priority is making sure all their answering service agents are professionally trained.
When you have professionally-trained answering service agents, you, your tenants, and prospective tenants will enjoy quality apartment answering services that are always consistent irrespective of when the call is made. Any company that invests its resources in quality training of its workers understands the training’s advantages to its business/customers. Professional training must include the correct telephone etiquette and know how to deal with difficult callers and situations.
Multi-Tasking Professionals
Apart from picking up the phone, greeting callers, and taking their messages, your answering service agents have also to be capable of providing general help. General assistance includes viewing appointments, scheduling maintenance, and routing calls to the relevant department, so your callers don’t have to wait for extended hours to have their problems solved.
Answering service agents have to be capable of screening calls using a sequence of specific questions that assist them in determining the call’s extent of severity then dispatch only the calls that require immediate attention to the personnel that can handle them. Also, they have to be capable of notifying you if there are any text messages or emails that require an urgent response.
Tailored to Your Kind of Business
The answering service agents that will be responding to calls and messages for your business have to be capable of meeting your specific needs. This could be achieved by giving them as much info as possible concerning your business to write custom scripts and develop a strategy for how messages and calls can be handled and directed.
Simple Web Interface
An answering service provider can make sure all the calls to your business are responded to and handled professionally— but what about you? Apart from providing stellar services, the apartment answering service provider you are considering must also make it simple for you. It ought to provide a complete web interface that permits you to manage and update all of the received maintenance requests and enable you to pay your bills and view the status of your account from wherever you are.
Benefits of an Apartment Property Management Answering Service
Hiring a live answering service for apartment management comes with several benefits for apartment managers and tenants, including the following:
24/7 Availability
You can’t tell when a potential tenant will call your apartment, and there’s no schedule on emergency maintenance matters for the current residents. Therefore you must have an answering service that has your needs covered 24/7. Our service is constantly available and ready to support your business.
Increase in Revenue
It’s six times more possible to secure leads when prospective tenants’ calls are answered within the initial thirty minutes after calling. An answering service makes sure that the odds of landing more significant deals favor you.
Enhanced Productivity
In the apartment property management business, there are so many things to think about and worry. There is not much time left to handle basic office issues between maintenance concerns and showing prospective tenants vacant units. With an answering service handling your phone calls, the small matters are resolved. An answering service can arrange appointments, communicate with dealers on your behalf, and respond to tenants’ complaints. This way, you will have only to focus on handling big things.
Prolonged Office Hours
Offsite answering services can virtually prolong your working hours overnight and even on major holidays and weekends. By continuing your business operations 24 hours a day, seven days a week, you will respond to the emergencies that happen after office hours. You will also be able to satisfy the third-shift tenants’ needs and handle administrative duties that may otherwise have been postponed.
Live Answering Agent Expertise
Automated telephone systems that have pre-recorded reminders could be convenient enough for other businesses. However, apartment tenants’ needs are usually too complicated or urgent for an automated system to solve. A live answering service provides the best possible tenant experience.
Quick Response to the Needs of the Tenants
From requests of standard maintenance to tenant emergencies and lockouts, call answering service agents are always on standby to help tenants with anything they need at whatever time they require it. Tenants will not have to wait or hold so they can report their concerns. Agents may even route on-call technicians as per the priority of those concerns, ensuring that maintenance employees are only called to work after office hours for those issues that need urgent attention.
Keep Units Always Occupied
A live apartment management answering service does not only provide significant experiences that manage to keep tenants glued in your apartment for longer, but they also assist in filling vacancies. As we mentioned earlier, a live answering service can handle leasing inquiries 24/7, answering questions on amenities and rates, scheduling property showing appointments, etc.
Convenient Web Interface
A live answering service will make business operations even much easier for you by putting all the tools you will need to review & manage call details, assessing performance and trend, paying your bill, etc. With the help of an answering service, you can have your online portal secure and featuring an easy-to-use web-based interface that permits you to log in and handle your business smoothly.
Increased Reputation
Another advantage of hiring an apartment management answering service is it raises the reputation of your company. Apartment managers that operate smaller businesses can provide the same degree of expert services for tenants and other customers, just like larger businesses do. The fact that you have an answering service that personally responds to all calls will let all the callers know that they are doing business with a reputable and professional company.
Personal Attention
Note that every caller is significant. Callers who receive personal attention, such as the type a live answering service provides, will undoubtedly know that they are invaluable to you. This is unlike with automated services which just repeat pre-coded messages to callers that their calls are essential. Allowing all of your tenants and prospective renters to obtain information and speak out on the issues they have will help you build a professional rapport with them based on customer service.
Elevated Efficiency
The moment you partner with a 24/7 apartment answering service, your existing staff won’t need to respond to phone calls and, at the same time, do their other duties anymore. Rather, they will have ample time to concentrate on the tasks they need to do and work with customers that have come to your office. Doing this increases the efficiency of the business significantly.
Message Delivery and Customized Scripts
A live answering service can offer unlimited call scripting, enabling answering service agents to help your callers with almost any issue fully. Guided by the custom call scripts, answering agents will screen every call with specific questions and determine the extent of urgency. This helps in making sure that your maintenance staff isn’t needlessly contacted. The messages that appear to be non-urgent may simply be sent as an SMS text message or emailed to a mobile phone.
Saves Time & Money
If you have an answering service, you can also save your company so much money. Rather than having in-office employees who you will have to pay a salary and provide benefits, a live answering service will be offered on a flexible monthly contract basis. Therefore, when you receive only fewer calls during those times, you will still pay for whatever you use only.
Also, neither will you have the hassle of looking for the appropriate people to handle your customers, nor will you be required to train them. This is because the live answering service provider will have already done all this for you. Even better, there isn’t the need to buy any of the software and equipment needed for handling phone calls since the service provider already has it.
What’s more, working with an answering service allows you the time and freedom to concentrate on what’s more important: running your business. Instead of answering phone calls yourself, which may take you away from the duty you are handling at the time, you can keep on working and have things done and, at the same time, have the calls answered.
Hire Professional Live Answering Services Near Me
As a property manager specializing in managing apartments, you always have a lot on your plate. Why worry about not answering phone calls when there’s a solution? Best Call Center can relieve you of that burden, from sorting maintenance requests and linking callers to on-call personnel during emergencies to helping tenants pay rent and giving potential tenants directions to your apartments.
We serve every apartment manager and tenant or prospective tenant, regardless of your location within the US, and are available 24/7. Call us at 800-385-4656, and we will be glad to provide our top-notch call answering services for your Property Management company. We will show you that you can successfully grow your business and delight your current tenants by professionally responding to every phone call.