Maintenance & Reputation

[Paul Rhodes] (0:03 - 9:14) Today on The Maintenance Mindset, we're going to look at data. Yes, facts, figures, statistics, details, particulars, information, evidence, intelligence, and study. Yes, I know, it sounds so fascinating.

Actually, it is. When we take something that is factual, it's related to what you and I do on a regular basis, and there is some behavior-changing information that we can apply to our everyday decisions in the maintenance world. It's all about taking data and applying it with a maintenance mindset.

Appwork is one of our founding sponsors. Much more than maintenance, Appwork is advanced business intelligence. Streamline maintenance workflows and keep an eye on the leaderboard as your service teams enjoy the gamification of maintenance.

Visit appworkco.com and transform your productivity today. So today's episode is the fault or blame or benefit or blessing or fantastic occurrence of really truly one person. If you happen to attend conferences or association events or any place that Leah Nicole Smith is presenting, do yourself a favor and get there.

Whatever topic she's speaking on is amazing. You see, Leah is the senior vice president of education and research for Satisfax. The reason why that's relevant is because several years ago, I became aware that I have to get outside my bubble from time to time.

I live in the world of maintenance. I focus on repairs and resident service and how our buildings are working and more specifically, educating our maintenance teams and our office teams and our management companies to do a better job of taking care of everything that's involved with it. And I began to recognize way back when I ran the team at HD Supply that if I'm only focused on my stuff and what is exactly before me today, then I'm missing out.

Not only that, I'm not going to be ready for whatever comes down the road in the future or is just around the corner. I need to begin paying attention. So I started looking for case studies and surveys and information, whether it's directly related to what I do or tangentially related.

Either way, it can offer some good information. Now, the reason why I bring Leah up is about a month, month and a half ago, I got the opportunity to speak down at the Florida Apartment Association Conference and Leah was presenting. She did two sessions and one of them was directly related to a survey that I would like to go over.

It's called the Biennial Online Renter Study and it looks at what renters are looking for online and it's done every other year. Now, Leah did a fantastic job presenting information and research and making some predictions and it was just a wonderful session, but it got me thinking. If she can take it and apply it to different things that surround her world, why can't I do that with my world, the world of maintenance?

So what I'd like to do today is actually go through this study, but we're not just going to go through the study from the standpoint of read and think, oh, that's interesting and then move on with our lives. What I have found and found years ago is the most effective is for me to actually begin going through the information presented and determine how it applies. Think through that if this information is correct, if this information is a true statement, then it must have some impact to what I'm doing and if it does have impact into what I'm doing, what do I need to explore in response?

Now, if you want a copy of this, you can go directly to Satisfact's website and download it. It's free, it's publicly available, and as a matter of fact, if we, as we go through this information, if you have thoughts, feel free to comment, like, and subscribe and let us know what your thoughts are. I know Leah would like to be sure that everybody gets as much use of this information as possible.

And, oh, I guess I should say I haven't been contacted by Satisfact's. There's no endorsement or remuneration of any type for what we're going to talk about today. So, hopefully, this will give some insight to our properties and how we can increase our maintenance response to what we have going on.

Now, the first thing that I would like to point out is that for those of you who are viewing this on video, you're going to see my absolutely horrible, abominable handwriting. And that's, from a personal study, that's kind of bad because my handwriting is awful. But if we take it a little bit larger, I think it does demonstrate that something we need to do as maintenance professionals, and maybe even as working professionals, and that's begin to interact with our information.

Psychologists and educators have for multiple years said that we need to interact with our information more often so that we can internalize it. And I'm sure we'll talk about that going forward. But the first thing that out at me when I was reviewing this information was a concept to deal with the question that was asked to renters.

Of all the info you could obtain online, how important would the following be when shopping for an apartment? And it said the most important thing for our residents to find out online was information on mandatory fees beyond advertised rent. That was listed as the most important thing.

But what actually stuck out to me was the fifth most important thing was the ability to easily communicate with the apartment community staff. Now, if we take that on our property level and begin to ask, how easy is it for our residents to communicate with us? Do our office hours actually make sense?

Not for us, not for how our business is done, but does it make sense for our residents? And one of the ways that we might want to react to that is, what if we potentially changed our working hours? I know in the case of my daughter and my daughter's generation, they prefer, different than myself, it's my understanding that they prefer to stay up later at night and sleep in in the morning.

Would it be attractive to future maintenance technicians if we adjusted the hours? I don't know how that would work. I'm not sure if it would work, but I think it is an interesting or different response to having the ability for our residents or our prospective residents to talk and communicate with us.

[Paul Rhodes] (9:18 - 9:19) Something to consider.

[Paul Rhodes] (9:20 - 31:57) I also thought that it was interesting that residents or online renters suggested that they would like a live chat with a community staff member. I've stated publicly several times I'm not a fan of chatbots, and we'll talk about chatbots here in a little while, but I do think it might be interesting for a resident or even a prospective resident to have the ability to chat with a human being at our property, at our community, and maybe even begin that tour communication sooner than what my understanding of our AI workflows are in the leasing space.

I did find it interesting that the last suggestion, which was down in the not important category of this particular study, was the least important method for obtaining online is that automated chatbot. So, maybe I'm not the only one who's not a fan of chatbots. Now, as we continue going through the survey, there are some things I just underlined or highlighted.

One of them was that a key finding when residents visited or online people visited the community website or researched online reviews was that there was a looking for authenticity and transparency. And I'm wondering if in our maintenance categories or our maintenance interactions with our residents and maybe even prospective residents on tours, are we being transparent in how we present ourselves? And if not, what do we do to fix it?

Although, if I'm honest, when we look at transparency and being authentic to prospective residents and our current residents, what are we actually saying by that transparency? And by that, and I have to confess that unfortunately, traveling around the country and driving through apartment communities and driving past apartment communities, the golf carts that I'm seeing, I mean, maintenance technicians, can we talk about the golf carts? They are in horrible shape, by and large, what I am seeing.

And if we're talking about communicating with authenticity and you saw or a resident sees what our golf carts look like, that we spend all day in and day out, what kind of trust does that communicate to our residents about the manner in which we go about repairs? In other words, if we're not taking care of this cart, of this vehicle in at least a safe way, what does that say to when a resident calls us to repair an air conditioner or to fix their bathtub? It says that renters, they shifted, particularly in age 18 to 34, they use online reviews to filter communities and they recognize that top of funnel, in other words, the beginning of that sales process is crucial.

And that beginning of the sales process prioritizes authenticity and transparency. As a maintenance team, we do bear a responsibility there. And maybe it is, begin with our golf carts, begin with what residents and prospective residents see once they get to our community.

The second section of this study looks at reputation. And it stated that residents are looking for information that's relevant to their unique needs and priorities. The reason why that was interesting to me is that one of the repeated sales pitches or reasons that residents should rent an apartment as opposed to buying a house is that we take care of things when they break.

Homeowners, if a toilet gets clogged, the homeowner, either the homeowner has to fix it or they've got to hire somebody, pay money out of pocket in order to fix it. Well, that we are selling to our prospective renters and our current renters as a reason why they should renew. So if they're looking for information that is relevant, what if we highlighted that?

It also goes on to say where reputation is concerned that 70% of renters admitted to intentionally looking for negative reviews. Now, I have to confess when I'm looking online at reviews, primarily when I'm looking online at reviews, it's at books to see what it's about. And often I find the negative review is more instructive about is this book going to meet my needs?

And I found it very interesting that Satisfacts found the same thing for prospective renters that were coming to or for our properties. And when you begin to dig into the study and dig into the findings that Satisfacts pulls out, the first thing that struck me was that 80% of the respondents said that a review that contains detailed information is most helpful for them in an online state. Well, if we take that out into the maintenance world, the communications that we have with our residents about repairs that we've done, how much detail are we providing for that?

In other words, we go into a resident's apartment and we fix the sliding glass door. Do we put any information that we fix the sliding glass door or do we write the four letter word? Done.

If residents are looking and finding most helpful from a review online, one that contains detailed information in our operations, are we thinking in placing the same amount of effect on that detailed information? Something to consider. Another thing that we can add to that, I mean, in the online review world, it's all typed information.

So it is readily readable because it's a standardized font that's being provided. But if we're writing on a resident's work order, if we're still using paper, is it legible? If we've moved beyond paper, which I would love to believe that the majority of us are now, are you writing in complete sentences?

Are you notating things with correct spelling? If your cell phone or your mobile device is in use, are you making use of spell check or of other apps that checks your grammar and offers suggestions? All of this does go back to that that perception of being a professional as opposed to just leaving the word done.

I did find it interesting that a few years ago, a study, I think it was through multifamily insiders on their study, they talked about the need for complete information. And the example that they gave was a maintenance technician who needed to order a part or needed to replace something for the repair to be complete. And all they told the resident or all the resident was hearing was, I'm not fixed yet.

And there was no definite time, date, or even inkling of a plan given. All that goes to say too, it's a reinforcement that we need to provide complete details, more information than just done or repaired or fixed. This one I found to be particularly interesting and it has to do with the stat of out of five stars, what is the minimum average star rating a community must have for you to consider living there?

In other words, if a potential resident is looking online and they're looking at a five-star rating system, we figured out a little bit ago that they began looking for negative reviews, meaning that, at least I take that to mean that our prospective residents are not looking for perfection. They're looking for reality that came out in that transparency piece. So Satisfacts apparently asked, what is the minimum you would consider living there before there were too many negative reviews for it to be a place that you were interested in living?

And their response was 3.82 stars. I took that, doing a little bit of math, I took that to be that it was 76%. In other words, if out of 100 properties, they wanted the top 24 properties that they would want to live at.

And it was interesting to me because when we begin to apply this to what we as maintenance professionals have input on, then it does begin to quantify the type of job that we need to do, which means our curb appeal needs to look better than 76% of our competition. I know this is probably oversimplifying it, but it does bring to mind, on one hand, the relief that residents and prospective residents aren't looking for perfection. So there is some reality involved here.

But it also brings the challenge that, hey, at this property, how the property looks, how it reads matters. And that I have to look at my community. I need to pick up everything I can find at my community because it's a higher bar to meet than just half.

In other words, I've got to be better than 76%. Over three quarters of my competition, I have to have a product, a property that is better than that. The other piece of that is that this might give a little bit of credence and push for us as a business to ensure that we take care of the things that we need to take care of because can we apply this to fresh paint on a property?

Does my paint look like it's better than three quarters of my competition? If not, then we may want to prioritize that for next year's capital spend. It's just an idea.

And really, what a lot of this study, when I went through and read it, it did lead to ideas. I mean, one of the questions that they ask is would you trust a ratings and review site if all or most of the reviews were only positive? And 47% of renters believe management companies need to be more open and transparent about the online reviews.

And that I saw just as going be real and transparent. This got me to be thinking about properties as they age, communities as they age. New apartments will never, ever be perfect.

They can be really good, but they'll never be perfect. And the gap, the variance between acceptable and perfect does have a tendency to get wider as our properties age. And if that's the case, then we need to be sure if we go back to that other stat of where our apartments are better than 76% of them.

But it also means that when our offices are leasing apartments, are they equipped with the information to understand that this countertop, for instance, unless we replace this countertop, it's always going to look that way. And we've done the best that we can with that counter. One of the big indicators is over time, buildings settle.

And if your building or your foundation or your floor has begun to settle, it's possible the walls are no longer straight up and down. They may move a little bit. And the backsplash that's attached to the counter, normally we put a bead of caulking in there.

If that backsplash has moved because the building is settled, either we need to do a large rehaul rehab on the countertop, fix the walls, or that caulking line is going to look a little bit different. Now, all of those are potential viable differences. But I guess what I'm getting at is that we need to be sure that as maintenance, we are equipping our office with the information that can be used to help sell and be transparent with residents.

That does go to reinforce that we need to have our office and our maintenance teams communicating on a regular basis. Another interesting finding was found in this section about experiences. And why would you, and in this case, it's talking about our potential customer or our current resident, why would you write a positive review online?

And I found it interesting that the number one answer that showed up for why somebody would write a positive review online, almost 82% said that the apartment community went above and beyond providing an exceptional experience. Now, in the maintenance world, that means to me that something broke and we fixed it better than what the resident was expecting. And eight out of 10 times, four out of five times, residents would be likely to write a review if something failed and we repaired it in a way that was beyond their expectations.

Then if we take that and run that across and the data that goes to where 24.9% say that they would write a positive review if their apartment community had a low average star rating that the customer didn't think it deserved. Now, when I correlate those two things together, it came about with the statement that says, if somebody was to experience a redemption, in other words, something failed, we went above and beyond in fixing that failure, they are twice as likely, almost twice as likely to write a positive review than if they thought somebody wrote a negative comment in an online state. I take that to mean that we as maintenance hold a huge amount of power and potential for impact.

Stuff is going to break at our properties. If we just do the bare minimum, if we bandaid it, if we only do just enough to be able to put the check mark on the service request that says done, then okay, so what? But if we go above and beyond and we make our resident a feel special in however that would work, then we are creating twice as much the advocate as if we were being unfairly yelled at for something that we're not responsible for.

That to me is an interesting thought and it really does reinforce how influential we as maintenance professionals have the possibility of being. I thought this kind of goes along with that last thought of the fact that we as maintenance can ask our residents for reviews. This probably is the perfect time for this to come out because it's my understanding that due to some recent court cases, and I am not an authority on this, but due to some recent court cases, we're actually not supposed to be paying people or giving gifts or giving in essence a bribe to give us a good review.

The reviews need to be honest. There's nothing saying that we as maintenance technicians can't ask for a good review. How many times do you go into a restaurant?

How many times do you listen to a podcast or watch a YouTube video and it says, you've even heard me say it, like and subscribe to this. That is me putting out a request for somebody else, for a customer, for a person who's experiencing something to provide influential information and there's I can't pay you and yet I'm still asking anyway. Maintenance professionals, it is okay to ask other people when appropriate to give you a review.

I'll be honest, I can't remember the last hotel that I went to that didn't have some form of request for five star this or 12 thumbs up this or 20 stars or whatever their review statement was. I did find it very interesting that they were requesting those positive reviews.

[Paul Rhodes] (32:03 - 32:12) Before we take a break here, this stat created an interesting thought.

[Paul Rhodes] (32:13 - 35:39) The question that Satisfacts asked was, how does it make you feel when an apartment community responds to an online review? And how does it make you feel when an apartment community does not respond to an online review? And if they do respond to an online review, it says that 71% said they had great customer service and if the apartment community does not respond, it was very close correlation to where 72% said they do not have great customer service.

What my thought was with this question is, how does it make you feel, Mr. or Mrs. Resident, when an apartment community responds to a maintenance need? How does it make you feel when they don't respond to a maintenance need? If we take this in the same world, an online review, that's where somebody has posted something in an online site stating or identifying a deficiency or a customer service observation.

And here, this does respond or doesn't respond is if the property acknowledges the existence of that review or doesn't acknowledge the resistance of that review. And it is, according to the data, an indicator of good or an indicator of bad customer service. Well, what about when we as maintenance professionals are walking across a parking lot and you see that resident coming the other way and that resident says, hey, the doors won't close all the way to the building.

And our response is, like many of us are taught, you'll have to tell the office and then we keep right on going. We just did not respond to a maintenance request. And according to this, by not responding, three quarters of those people think that we now provide horrible customer service.

I would think we could even go so far as to say we've reinforced the fact that we provide horrible customer service by not responding to that. Maybe it's time for us to look at our communication practices and how frequently we're telling our maintenance teams to direct residents to go to the office. I understand why.

There's a good reason behind it. But maybe it's time that we looked back at that from a customer service lens to see if we're actually providing the thing that our residents want, which is a solution, not documentation created. They just want it fixed.

Something to think about.

[Paul Rhodes] (35:40 - 35:45) We'll be right back after this short break with some more things to think about.

[Paul Rhodes] (35:50 - 36:23) Our sponsor today is Appwork. Best known for exceptional maintenance workflow management, Appwork offers so much more. Optimize operations with its advanced business intelligence that turns data into strategy.

Simplify your operations with Appwork's intuitive platform. Service team members love the gamification of maintenance workflows and leaderboards, making everyday tasks a competition for number one. From project management to team communication, Appwork has you covered.

Visit appworkco.com today.

[Paul Rhodes] (36:32 - 36:33) Welcome back.

[Paul Rhodes] (36:33 - 40:49) Now we're going through the Satisfacts online biannual online rental study and we've come to a section that I think is under reported for maintenance technicians, or maybe more accurately, we would say that I think that maintenance technicians are under aware of the importance that perception plays in how they go about their business, how they go about their job. So this, in this case, we're looking at the perception we are presenting to our customers and our prospective customers. And the first thing that I thought about during this key finding is, they make this statement, the survey makes a statement of, have you ever considered renting an apartment community because of the property management company's brand name?

And I'm not sure I have an opinion on that, but what I did have an opinion on is from a maintenance standpoint, where do we play in creating a perception around a brand name? I mean, chances are, if you're listening to this, if you've listened this far, you have a few names of management companies that pop to your head really, really quickly. And of those companies, what perception do you have about their maintenance employees?

Do you even have a perception about their maintenance employees? Because I'll be honest, in the lives of our residents, if the sales pitch is heavy on the, come live here, you won't have to fix anything. We provide repairs for you.

And that's a part of what the value proposition is of living in our community. If that is a huge part of our sales pitch, why don't we have a idea of what the maintenance attitudes, skill level, appearance, curb appeal is of a maintenance person that works at that management company? If we take it down to the lower, the boots on the ground level, maintenance technicians, what sort of perception are you giving your residents about your brand?

And by your brand, I mean, if you're someone that knows how to fix air conditioning equipment, do your residents have the perception that you do? Or do they have the perception that here's just a rough and tumble guy. He showed up at my door and he says he can fix the air conditioning.

I'm not sure he can. If that's the perception before you actually fix it, then we've moved away from that overriding call we had at the beginning of authenticity and transparency. So maintenance technicians, how clean is your shirt?

What's your appearance? Does it fit? Are you wearing a business style clothes?

Up one level. Property leaders, what does your team have as a perception for the residents? Are they professional?

Do they have the perception of appearing competent in what they're doing?

[Paul Rhodes] (40:51 - 40:52) It's something to consider.

[Paul Rhodes] (40:55 - 55:43) When we get into and begin looking at technology, it was interesting to me that the numbers came back that cell phone and email communication had dropped over the course of since the last survey that was done. But text message had actually gone up. This, I got to confess, was a surprise to me.

I am not a fan of using a cell phone for other methods of communication besides a phone call. As a matter of fact, if you have my phone number and you've called me and I wasn't, for whatever reason, able to answer, you get a voicemail message that says, you reached me. I'm with somebody in the real world.

Leave me a message. I know my face is very, very gray now and I'm still an old guy. I like voicemail messages.

If something was important enough for you to call me, tell me what it was, even to the point in my little message there. My suspicion is people don't listen to it much these days. But my message says, I will listen to it.

And furthermore, if you don't leave a message, then whatever you called me about wasn't important enough for me to worry about calling you back. Again, I'm of a different generation. So I recognize by looking at this, I need to get more comfortable with the other forms of communication.

But that does bring up a point. If our residents are looking for us to communicate with them more by text message, and apparently it's up 10% over the survey two years ago in 2021, that residents want us to communicate that way. Have we trained our maintenance teams in text etiquette?

Like, do you use emojis? What emojis do you stay away from? Is punctuation required?

Is it expected? Or are you viewed as weird for putting punctuation in? Yes, I use punctuation in my text messages and I've received critiques for it.

But that's how I learned to communicate in writing is full sentences and punctuation and rarely use the acronyms for abbreviations in text message because it's there. Overall, you probably figured out I'm not a real big fan of text communication. I much prefer complete communication of a dialogue, of communication.

The next study or the next finding that I thought was interesting was a statement that said that asked online renters if they found which technology features would the renters find useful. And the response was, the first was the ability to pay rent online without a service fee. That, to me, almost seems like a no-brainer.

The second and the third, though, were the ones that caught my attention as a maintenance professional and that was the ability to communicate with the management team and the ability to submit a service request online. So the question I have is do we, when we, if we're using a resident portal, for them to put in a work order to us, does our resident portal, first of all, ask for a method for maintenance to get back in touch with them, with the resident? And second of all, do we provide a way for or reinforce a way for our residents to get in touch with us directly?

I'm kind of torn where resident portals are concerned. They're convenient. They're great.

Residents can put in work orders all day and night and request service or notify us of things that are broken. I'm a really big fan of the ability for a resident to take a picture or a short video of something and upload it. That could be very, very useful as a maintenance professional to figure out exactly what it is our resident is asking for.

The challenge I've got, though, is if a resident is putting something in the resident portal, are we stressing the fact that whatever method of communication we ask them to provide us, will they actually monitor it in the moment? In other words, if I'm in a resident's apartment and they say sink leaking and I get there and I cannot make the sink leak while I'm standing in the apartment, it would be extremely helpful for me to be able to call a resident and say, what do you mean sink leaking? Maybe I misunderstood and it's the kitchen sink and not the bathroom sink.

Or maybe the sink is dripping, not leaking, which that also leads to a problem with residents putting in service requests without human intervention is the ability to clear up that difference. It's a fun game to play between your office and maintenance staff is to ask each team member to define what does it mean if a resident says the faucet is leaking or the faucet is dripping. It's a fun game.

Great, great conversation that it ends up having. But it was fascinating that both of these want the ability to communicate directly with the management team and to request, make a service request online. Both of those I thought were interesting findings.

When thinking about your next move, is there anything you would do differently was the question that was asked for renters and over half stated that they wanted to view the actual apartment in person. And I took that to mean that they wanted to see it before they signed the paperwork for the lease. I know this is a dangerous concept for a maintenance technician, but are we communicating to our maintenance teams that we would like to do that with the apartment?

And if so, does our timeline realistically affect the ability to do that? Those are questions I think that those findings ask. And this was one was talking about in the section of the survey that discusses expectation versus reality gap.

It talks about there being one and there's some interesting thoughts, but it spurred in me the question of does our community actually match our online presence? I don't know what the name of the tools are, but I'm aware of some photography enhancement tools that are used to make pictures look better. Pictures of the swimming pool that leaves are removed out of or make the sky a little bit bluer.

Those are great tools and it does work online, except remember back to one of those first findings is people want transparency and they want reality. Is there a better solution that gets us closer to reality? I mean, if I've got a swimming pool that's got a large tree over it, there's going to be times during the year that no matter what I do as a maintenance professional, there's going to be leaves in the pool.

Yes, we can make it better. Yes, clean out the skimmer, make sure the weir's in place, all of those mechanical technical things. But are we setting ourselves up for potential failure if we make our online presence too pretty?

I'm not saying we need to leave trash. I'm not saying we need to do it, but it's something to consider. It's something to think about when we begin looking at these online tools.

Now, the interesting part of this survey I thought was fascinating was that at the end of the study piece, Satisfacts and Apartment Ratings made some predictions for 2025 and as we're getting towards the end of 2024, it's my understanding this study actually came out in January of 2024, Satisfacts and Apartment Ratings make some what I think are good predictions and they're interesting predictions. So, the first prediction that Satisfacts makes is that renters will be technology fluent.

That's a challenging one as our maintenance teams are struggling with it as a whole. If we're not on digital work orders, if we're still using paperwork orders, it may be time to really look at an investment for some technology. But it also means that if our residents are looking for a technology fluent place to live, then we need to train our maintenance teams in what technology etiquette is, how to and how not to contact or communicate with our residents, and what is our stance on paper or analog tools.

I mean, I'm still a huge fan that anytime I go into a resident's apartment, I want to leave something physical behind that says I was there. I'm aware of some work order or service request platforms that they will send an email to residents letting the resident know that maintenance was or is in their apartment and the repairs have been completed and that's great. I like that.

I'm not saying in place of that, I'm saying in addition to that. I'm a big fan of actually getting like a business card, sized card that you can write, kind of like what I see in some hotels that says it's a business card, little tent card that says your room was serviced by Bob or by Janet or by Gomez or by Esmeralda. You know, you've got a person that you can associate with doing that job in the room.

Why don't we do that for maintenance? Why not in addition to the digital world, why not leave behind a physical business card that says, Paul was in here and completed your service request today. For more information, check your online portal or look in your email or text message.

I'm sure there's a better way of saying that, but I think there is still some room to provide that physical, tangible customer service experiment. The second prediction that they make for 2025 is that renters will demand the care of one. And the statement that they made is although tech-reliant, renters will demand personal connections with on-site teams.

So that to me says that our maintenance people need to be known by a name. They're people. They're serving people.

Are we enabling our maintenance teams to have that connection? Do we require them to wear name badges? Is our residents' names provided on the technology that we're using for service requests that a resident can be identified as the name, not just apartment 1244B?

They're looking for personal interaction and that need for personal interaction had the thought come to me of, you know, employee retention is resident retention. If residents see a spinning door of maintenance team people that over the course of a couple of months, you go through three or four or five maintenance people, what impression, what perception does that give to our residents about the stability of this as a place to live?

[Paul Rhodes] (55:46 - 55:48) Things to think about.

[Paul Rhodes] (55:55 - 1:03:53) The third prediction that Satisfacts and Apartment Ratings makes is that renters will be, and this is their term, hyper-tribalized. And that to me is fascinating that renters will click. They'll gravitate towards a sense of community.

That brought to mind a vivid memory. I did some work here in downtown Atlanta where I floated to a property years and years ago as a maintenance supervisor. I spent about six weeks there when the management company I was working for at the time needed somebody to cover that property.

And it was fascinating that because I was filling in as the employee of the management company, and we were using temporary help to staff the property, that every day was an adventure because there was nobody else on site that I could ask, hey, I need to work on the lights outside building number three. Do you know where the photo cell is or where the timer is for that building? The thing I remember most about that was that after I was at the property there for about a week or 10 days, I met a gentleman that everybody called the mayor.

And the reason he had that name is he had lived at that community for 23, 24 years. And he'd been around. He actually knew more about the mechanical workings of that property than anybody else.

Now he would be the first to tell you he's not going to take tools and go fix anything. But I found out pretty quick that if I needed to know an answer to that question of the photo cell, all I had to do was go over to the mayor's patio. And he had this little beautiful dog that was funny.

He sat out on his patio all day, every day, and he just watched what was going on. And chances are he had a story about somebody or something that happened in building three that would cause him to pay attention to where the photo cell was. And what this is getting at is that there is at each of our properties, there is a value to legacy knowledge.

And again, if we have a high turnover rate, that knowledge has gone out the door. And it places an even higher need for longevity in our properties as a maintenance technician, as a maintenance team, keeping a maintenance team intact allows for an easier transfer of that legacy knowledge. And if residents are going to be in the terms here, hyper tribalized, that's going to increase the speed at which maintenance, bad maintenance service goes.

It also increases the speed at which good maintenance service will be transmitted. And if we begin to put all the information together, this study provides, it reinforces the need for maintenance to be very, very keenly focused on their outward perception from a personal brand status, even to a property team brand, and take that all the way up to the management company. For those of us who work for larger management companies, that has a large impact and would be a part of this hyper tribalization of our residents, just from an impact standpoint.

Our next piece is our next prediction is that renters will be truth seekers. And from a maintenance standpoint to apply this, reality is more important than good perception. Let's make reality and perceptions match.

In other words, honest news, even if it's bad, is better to give to our residents than than just news that makes them feel good. If a part is custom, I was doing, helping a friend called about how to repair a window. And we did some research and some looking and called a supply house and the supply house told us that it will be six weeks before the leveler for this particular window would be available.

And after that, it would be an additional two weeks to get it here from wherever it was being sourced from. And while as the customer, my friend was noticeably upset, he wanted to fix the window faster than that. But he did and was thankful that he now had an accurate guess as to when the part would be here so that he could make plans accordingly.

When we're leaving messages to our residents, be honest, as close to honest as we can. Provide that good service. And there may be times that we have to stand up and deliver bad news.

If it's honest, deliver the bad news. I mean, there may be some ways or methods in order to give that as information. All in all, I found this study to be interesting and worthy of thought.

It's my goal when looking at studies like this that while yes, the data that's presented does have an immediate face value application, but I bet there's correlations that any study, any survey, any report that we get has some information that can be gleaned from it and applied to what's going on on our progress. Thank you for joining me today. I hope you have a fantastic weekend and next week.

I'll see you somewhere. Thank you again to Appwork for sponsoring today's episode. Imagine carrying a digital make ready board in your pocket with work order tracking and maintenance technician leaderboards designed to gamify the process and bring out your team's competitive best.

Appwork offers solutions to headaches that have plagued the multifamily industry for decades. Visit www.appworkco.com today.