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Turning feedback into learning opportunities

property management | October 2, 2019
Adam Hooley

As businesses, we are implementing new initiatives all the time to seek feedback from our clients. Feedback is probably the most dynamic space in our business at the moment. We started seeking feedback by asking our clients over the phone. We then moved to sending surveys. Next was a static net promoter score (NPS) survey and have now we have moved to trigger based NPS survey. But what do we do with all this feedback?

With a shipload of customer feedback entering our business every day, it vital that we are finding a way to document and review it. This feedback full of trends on how we are delivering quality and value to our clients. When collating the data, rich themes will begin to appear, highlighting areas of our business that we can streamline and demonstrate immense value. Feedback is not an admin task. This feedback should be shared with the entire team where opportunities will surface for the team to learn and grow.

Customer feedback provides us with rich learnings from our clients, whether it be good feedback or bad.

Feedback allows us to review our current systems and processes, to keep doing things we are getting positive feedback on, and to review things we are getting negative feedback on. These present us with learning opportunities for our team and can be used in conjunction with our team training days to review our processes and procedures.

In a recent conversation with several LPMA members, we discussed recent results they had been receiving through their Ailo customer surveys from there clients. It seemed that clients considered their property managers as knowledgeable and good at communication but didn't see value in the fees they were paying. This allowed us to open up the conversation about how they could provide better value to their customers. Lots of things surfaced, during this discussion, including adding extra services to provide value. A consensus soon surfaced that perhaps the value was there already and that maybe we didn't communicate this to our clients.

There was confusion when all offices had scored well in communication, so this area of value was forgotten. But we soon realized that it was the type of communication that was holding back their value score. Their property managers all worked hard, but their clients didn't know this. There was perception they were managing properties on behalf of our clients, so they should avoid too much contact. Minimal contact is where they were going wrong. They should be sharing this with their clients. They should be updating them regularly on the progress of work. They should be sharing their progress on a lease renewal with the tenant, or how many tenant inspections and applications they have on properties they are marketing.

Like we did as a group of business leaders, you must use this same process in your teams. Take the opportunity to review the feedback coming from your clients, and brainstorm ways to adjust your systems and processes to improve the service and value you are delivering.

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