Resident Expectations

 Have you ever had residents that came back or met you in the parking lot and said, Hey, I thought when you were in my apartment last time you were going to do something, or, why wasn't my faucet new when I moved in? Or why doesn't my air conditioner do this? Whatever it is, those are all examples of missed expectations.

You and I as maintenance technicians, we go in and we do our job. Often the job that we're doing has minimal amounts of information that we have to go on at the beginning of that job. We make multiple decisions as we go about performing that work, and in the end, those decisions that we made may not match what our resident originally had expected.

Not only that, there's not really a good way for us to know. So here's a couple of of tips on how we can ensure best that we meet those expectations First, be familiar with the lease. That lease spells out what our residents should be able to expect from us regarding how quickly we respond. Uh. Not only that, the types of responses that we're going to do a, a frequent missed resident expectation is that somebody who is with maintenance will respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five, sixty six days in a leap year all the time.

And not only that, we are that fast to get there. That's a missed expectation if that's what our residents already think. So first we need to be familiar with the lease. The second thing, from a maintenance standpoint, it's a good idea to actually sit in on your leasing team's, uh, uh, move in, process the entire process.

In other words, at move, move-in many properties have their leasing team go through the intricacies of the lease with their residence. It's a good idea for us as a maintenance team to hear exactly what the expectations are being laid out to our residents. It might even be a good idea after sitting in on that process to take our leasing team aside and ensure that we understand what is being promised or discussed to our new resident and our leasing team understands what that effect will be.

A case in point, if somebody calls the office from a, from the property and says that they have a maintenance need, how is our office responding to that? Are they saying, yes, my maintenance technician will be right there, or are they saying. I hear you. My maintenance technician will be there as quickly as possible, and that may mean a couple hours or a, a day or two.

If our office is replying by, say, we'll be right there in our residents mind. They now have an expectation that's set up that they can go walk right over to that door, open it, and there's a maintenance technician standing on the opposite side of it. Now, you and I both know that is impossible. Ultimately, meeting resident expectations boils down to what are we doing to set those expectations, and is the setting of expectations reasonable?

I. By making both of those things meet, we have less opportunity for expectations to be missed.