One of the most important jobs of a property manager is to build strong relationships with their tenants through good customer service. While many rental property owners don’t have the time to go above-and-beyond in building loyalty and trust with their renters, experienced property mangers like Martin Feinberg understand the importance of increasing tenant retention.  Finding new renters every year is both time-consuming and costly.  Keeping investment and rental properties lucrative means providing exceptional customer service.

Good customer service can drive sales and grow business.  This is true for all businesses, including leasing rental properties.  Exceptional customer service can help both rental property owners and the property managers who represent them to stay competitive in a busy market.

Below are three ways that professional property managers can improve customer service.

Be Personal and Personable:

Good customer service is personal and memorable.  A business is only as strong as the relationships behind it and property managers need to take the time to show genuine interest in both tenants and clients. Personal recognition is a powerful way to deepen relationships and cultivate customer loyalty.  Keeping track of, and acknowledging, milestones like birthdays, anniversaries, and achievements shows tenants and owners that their property manager cares about the important events in their lives.  Managers can use technology to keep track of important dates and set reminders to send resident birthday cards or anniversary gifts to owners for example.  Most property managers are set up to easily balance the use of technology with sentiment.

Utilize Texting:

Most tenants prefer to communicate with their property manager through texts, and Millennials especially will expect texting to be a significant aspect of their relationship with their landlords.

Face-to-face communication is important, but tech-enabled customer service gives property managers a competitive edge. Using proven technology, like a resident portal, to enhance communication with tenants is also essential.  It makes it easier for tenants to reach a property manager and also makes managing showings and maintenance tasks more efficient.

Stay in Touch and Communicate:

When a crisis hits, sometimes the instinct is to keep owners and tenants as far from the problem as possible.  However, a lack of information almost always causes more problems that it solves, including cultivating distrust between property managers and the people they work with and for.  When issues crop up property managers need to be upfront with owners and tenants about what is going on. Property managers need to clearly communicate problems to everyone that will be affected and keep them informed of what is taking place to get the problem resolved.

Personalized, out-of-the-box customer service is key for all businesses, property management included.