ServusConnect takes your maintenance operations to the next level with features like mobile maintenance, digital inspections & resident notifications.
Lets Talk Analytics!
Hey All!
First, we would just like to say that this blog may sound like we are just bragging about how awesome our reporting and analytics are BUT we promise there is more to it! We aren’t trying to be pretentious, ServusConnect’s customer reporting, specific analytics, and customizable dashboards can be a real gamechanger for property performance and resident satisfaction!
Why is this so important?
We all know that residents make the world go round… wait maybe that isnt it, but residents and their satisfaction is super important! Resident satisfaction can tremendously help properties in a number of ways- resident satisfaction can help a property stand out to prospective residents, it can increase resident engagement, and of course it can encourage more leases to be fulfilled.
So how can we help?
All of us here at ServusConnect are very proud of our analytics reporting system. Our various dashboards can be as broad or as focused as you’d like, and we will ensure that they are telling you exactly what you want and need to know!
Geo-mapping
Our geo-mapping technology can give you a bird’s eye view of your property, but with some spice! Geo-mapping can track exactly what units, or properties are having issues; this can help give insight to possible trends that are taking place on your property so you can be proactive.
Dashboards
Dashboards are so much more than a handful of important numbers thrown on a screen! These helpful tools can put a property's biggest weakness or strength right in front of you to monitor. Our dashboards can interpret how your residents feel about the work being done, it can monitor how your staff is performing, and how your team is handling their new software! We offer an amazing adoption dashboard that gives insight into which team members are using ServusConnect, this helps gage training needs, and areas of coaching. To help support our clients we offer some pretty great training as well as a fully staffed support team here in the US to help with any hiccups you may encounter along the way. Again, we’re not bragging we’re just pretty proud of what we have and love to show it off! So, if you haven’t seen ServusConnect it might be worth 30 mins of your time.
Latest Addition to Our Portfolio: Harbor Group
Press Release!
The team here at ServusConnect is excited to announce that Harbor Group Management has joined our portfolio of valued clients! Harbor Group, based in Norfolk, VA, owns and operates over 40,000 units of residential apartment communities, valued at over $4 billion.
Harbor Group is a significant win for ServusConnect as we continue to grow our client base of regional and national multifamily operators, expanding our market presence and fueling our growth heading into 2021.
Similarly, selecting ServusConnect is a strategically important technology deployment for Harbor Group, enabling them to modernize maintenance operations and improve efficiency at every HG community. Additionally, ServusConnect’s Resident Engagement capabilities will ensure HG residents continue to receive the maintenance quality-of-service they have come to expect as the company continues to scale into new markets.
A Deeper Analysis
Ok, now that we’ve gotten the press release out of the way, let’s get down to the real question, “What led up to this decision?” (if I were reading this blog that is what I’d like to know :-).
It’s a great question for sure and the answer lies in the depth of diligence Harbor Group took throughout the process. Most of our clients and prospects come to us with similar variations of these issues and/or needs they are trying to solve for:
- We’ve got a backlog of service requests we’re struggling to keep up with.
- We don’t know what our maintenance teams are doing on a daily basis.
- We need to remove the time-sucking bottlenecks from our maintenance workflow.
- We need to do a better job of communicating with our residents about items related to maintenance operations.
- Whatever it is, it’s gotta be easy!
Harbor Group Management shares these priorities and challenged us with questions that were much more analytical in nature, like:
- Based on actual data from testing at a community, what impact does ServusConnect have on effectiveness and efficiency of our property teams?
- How can SC improve our residents’ maintenance experience, not only today, but in the future?
- Prove where and how SC can recover operational maintenance costs and pay for itself in the first year (or less).
- How can SC streamline regional & national management’s ability to assess operational health and effectiveness of HG’s assets?
- If SC was deployed and went away, would our property teams go on strike until they got it back?
- Can it scale with us as we grow by 10,000-20,000 units per year?
The Result
We’re super thankful to have “passed diligence”. Through hundreds of man-hours of testing, feedback, “spreadsheeting”, and Zoom meetings between the respective teams, these and many other questions were proven out.
In the process, we got to know each other pretty well. That said, we’d be remiss not to acknowledge a couple of people from the Harbor Group Management team who played a huge role in diligence and getting the deal over the finish line. Much thanks and gratitude to Jeremy Voigtmann, Managing Director, Commercial and Construction Management and Bob Lee, Director of Technical and Safety Services, who both invested countless hours in the process, not to mention their commitment and desire to make substantive improvements to Harbor Group Management’s operations!
What's Next?
We’re thankful to survive the sales cycle, but let’s face it, not every client needs to go through this level of diligence to justify bringing on a new technology - they just need to know someone else did!
In subsequent blog posts, we’re going to highlight some of Harbor Group’s diligence findings in hopes that these can help other multifamily operators short-circuit the process and start experiencing the value of ServusConnect in weeks, and not months or years.
While we look forward to working with their 500+ maintenance techs and launching 120+ communities, if we can help or if there anything you'd like to learn about us - reach out! We'd be excited to hear from you! Our newest addition to the team- Nicole would be a great point of contact! Shoot an email to nicole@servusconnect.com.
Foundations of the New Operational Standard in Multifamily Maintenance
Soooo, just being honest here - the original title of this post was "Foundations of the New Normal in Multifamily Maintenance".
It just didn't feel right and though accurately descriptive, the term "new normal" is, well, an over-used and somewhat nauseating phrase at this point. It shares similar status to "unprecedented", "trying", and let's not forget our favorite: "uncertain" times.
That said, the team here at ServusConnect is going to work really hard to try and not use any of these (or the other Pandemic Words People Hate) moving forward. You are welcome. :-)
Let's Use "New Operational Standards" Instead
It just sounds better, doesn't it?
Operational standards and associated best practices change as business conditions change; this is a pretty normal phenomenon. What is painfully clear, through 5 months of pandemic-experience, is that business conditions have changed.
This is most definitely the case for Multifamily/Apartment Maintenance Operations - hence there are some new standards and best practices centered around Contact-Less.
Foundations to Contact-Less Maintenance Operations
In previous blog posts, we've shared pre & post pandemic data and forward-looking insights from industry leaders, and how multifamily data supports the case for investing in a contact-less resident experience. At this point, it's fair to say that operational best practices to minimize close person-to-person contact have become the new operational standard and technology can and should play a key role in facilitating these contact-less experiences.
This being said, there are a three foundational capabilities that should considered essential in order to facilitate a Contact-Less maintenance experience - or...at least they make it much, much easier:
1. Online & Mobile
This is a basic first step, but needed to unlock the rest. It's maintenance information when staff needs it, where they need it and how they need it. Online service requests & mobile work orders accessible from any device (both staff & resident) is not just convenient and a time-saver, its an essential piece of the new operational standard in multifamily for a contact-less maintenance workflow. It's also the main contributor to the real-time visibility and reliable historical record-keeping - without real-time input from the field, visibility is hampered and stale.
2. Workflow Automation
Online & mobile unlocks the ability to apply layers of automation to maintenance workflows. Eliminating redundant or routine tasks through automation reduces risk on many levels, not to mention is a huge time-saver. Examples of this are automatically notifying the resident of work order status via text message, or auto-assigning a resident service request to a technician's mobile device. These are simple, yet effective ways to save time, remove bottlenecks and eliminate unnecessary person-to-person contact, thereby reducing risk.
3. Visibility-Through-Analytics
A key to any successful operations teams, realtime & historical visibility into what's done, what needs to get done, who's doing what, resident service sentiment, and countless other KPIs are not just a nice-to-have's, but need-to-have's. Combine this with a window into things like geo-mapping of unit conditions (like "units under quarantine"), analytics and the inherent visibility they provide are an extremely important operational decision-making tool.
Operationally Proven, Fundamentally Sound
The good news is that, like many other operational technologies (online leasing, resident portals, chatbots, virtual tour platforms) seeing more wide-spread adoption by multifamily operators, these foundation capabilities have been around for a while and are proven - this is certainly the case with the ServusConnect Platform.
We also recognize that as technology servicing apartment maintenance operations, it is our responsibility to push the limits of our platform and do everything possible to facilitate safe interaction between maintenance teams and residents. Not only are we developing new features to assist in general safety & awareness of maintenance operations, we recognize there is more work to be done, so be ready for more innovation from us in the upcoming weeks and months!
Now is the Time for a Touch-Less Resident Experience. Here's Why...
Who hasn’t walked into a grocery store and felt icky about punching in your shopper’s club card at the checkout pin-pad, or maybe you've made a practice of using your knuckles to enter your PIN number at the gas pump. How about the liberal application of hand sanitizer not only on your hands, but also your keys, credit card, door handles, steering wheel, radio volume, and shifter knob every time you get into the car?! You are not alone… :-)
Overnight, touch-less experiences went from being convenient in grocery stores and gas stations, to being viewed as essential for general safety and personal wellness of everyone. Zoom meetings, online grocery pickup & delivery, virtual classrooms, work-from-home, social distancing...all touch-less experiences that were once the exception are now the norm. Business trips, trade-shows, handshakes, concerts, physical classrooms, hugs-to-people-living-outside-your-home...now the exception.
That said, if you are in Multifamily and you aren't already all-over creating a touch-less Resident Experience, you should start immediately. Online Leasing, Virtual Tour Strategy & Mobile Maintenance should be top on your list. You should also be aggressively marketing your touch-less capabilities and efforts. Here's Why...
Data Supports Change in Resident Sentiment
In June, ServusConnect participated in a webinar that examined Multifamily data & trends during and after lockdown. Checkout these data points specific to digital (inherently touch-less) interactions for current and prospective residents:
- Website traffic up by 32%
- 67% swing in applications received online versus in-person
- Resident portal use up by 31%
- Significant increases in electronic rent payments (credit card, ACH)
- Equally-significant drops in cash & check payment volumes
- 30% increase in service requests submitted online
- 20% of all service requests were addressed remotely (SMS, voice, video assist; parts-at-door)
(BTW - if you are interested, here is a link to a complete summary of that webinar)
Pandemic, for better or worse, has forced previously lagging adoption of resident-facing technology in Multifamily. Renter sentiment has shifted to not only be more accepting of digital methods of interacting on things like rent payments, service requests and leasing, the pandemic has moved the needle to preferred.
Health & Wellness Has Become a Key Business Driver
Speaking of digital methods of interacting, as an industry, Multifamily has been working on digital transformation for some time now. That said, key business drivers for investment in associated technologies focussed on enhancing competitive advantage, cost-savings, and NOI improvement.
Incidentally, like many other software vendors in Multifamily, we here at ServusConnect have spent years messaging and calculating these drivers, along with other benefits such as greater staff efficiency, more detailed repair documentation, faster service, improved resident experience, meaningful data, measurable ROI, etc.
Here’s the “but”: the game has changed. Pandemic has changed our priorities. Safety, health & wellness of residents and staff is a key business driver - it’s on the list, actually, near the top.
If you haven’t started to place a priority on, or put a strategy together for technologies that enable a touch-less resident experience, now is the time. Again, Online Leasing, Virtual Tours & Mobile Maintenance are good starting points.
Technology Maturity
The good news is that these technologies have been around for some time now and are proven. Not only that, but deployments of these types of technologies have simplified greatly - frankly everyone is just better at it.
Speaking for our team here at ServusConnect, we've been focussed on Mobile Maintenance and optimizing Resident's service experience for many years now. This isn't a shameless plug, as the same can be said for not only our competitors, but for many other vendors enabling touch-less resident experiences for online leasing, payments, contact centers, virtual tours, etc.
Plan...But Continue to Hope
Psychologists say it takes 66 days for a new behavior to become automatic. We’re well beyond that with our current pandemic precautions, which means all of the statistics previously listed are only going to increase as behaviors and habits get locked-in.
In the meantime, as we all prepare, plan and implement for a new normal where face-to-face interaction takes a back seat to touch-less ones, let's all keep hope alive for a cure and some return normalcy.
Personally, I'm hopeful for an afternoon baseball game with my wife & kids in a packed Durham Bulls Athletic Park...