Property managers continuously struggle with balancing the needs of their residents with their own interoffice demands.
A quality telephone answering service can help to eliminate redundancy and improve efficiency, while keeping property management costs down.
Here are four ways they make it possible:
- Around-the-clock expertise: We live in a nonstop world and have evolved into a society that never sleeps. A property manager’s answering service can – and should – be his or her saving grace after-hours. By tapping into 24/7 availability, you can rest assured that your properties and residents are taken care of after you’ve gone home for the evening. Friendly, knowledgeable call center agents are skilled at scheduling appointments, completing forms, scheduling follow-up calls, and much more. Most importantly, they understand when first call resolution is appropriate and when escalation is necessary.
- Text and email services: Call center agents can immediately relay important messages to your on-call staff with just one click, saving precious time that would otherwise be spent phoning the answering service directly and jotting the message down by hand. This significantly improves response time and helps to eliminate errors. Fewer calls ultimately mean lower bills. Not to mention that maintenance and management contacts can be reached simultaneously via text, keeping all on-calls informed of a job’s status, while freeing up the dispatcher from spending time paging each team member individually.
- Emergency dispatching: A quality answering service doesn’t simply answer calls –its agents are also explicitly trained to “make the call” when determining what truly constitutes an emergency situation, and what calls can be held until the following morning when your office opens. By doing so, they not only protect you – the project manager – from costly damages and liability, but they protect your residents as well. This boosts customer satisfaction, bolsters your reputation as a PM, saves you time, and keeps property management costs down.
- Relationship building: Virtual receptionist services can ensure that your callers are never sent to voicemail. This not only frees up your office staff to focus on more immediate needs, but it also provides an optimal level of customer service which builds better relationships between you and your residents and can lead to greater occupancy rates in the long run. Better yet, most quality call centers are paid only when they handle your calls – which is far more cost-effective than hiring a full-time receptionist.
Focus Telecommunications literally wrote the book on answering service protocols and has been protecting property managers’ reputations since 1987. We can answer calls for one property or one hundred and offer detailed billing that allows our clients to pass through costs.
For more information on how we can help you keep answering service bills manageable, reach out to request a quote online.