6 community maintenance tips for exceptional tenant experience to go above and beyond.
By Kris Servidio
Senior Associate Director of Facilities and Support
Mark-Taylor Residential
The dedicated everyday work of maintenance and service teams at a multifamily community has an incredible impact on the overall living experience. Creating an inviting home-like environment would not be possible without expert community maintenance practices.
Here are six community-maintenance tips from us here at Mark-Taylor:
1. Your work, their home
While it may sound simple, remembering that you are working on someone’s home is critically important to creating an exceptional experience. This is where your residents live, relax, enjoy time with their loved ones, and make memories. When something needs to be fixed in their unit or in the building, it is happening to their home – the place where they should feel most at peace. They may feel unsettled or frustrated until the situation is fixed or resolved.
Our service teams deliver service that goes above and beyond because we share an understanding that our goal is to provide incredible places to call home. It reinforces that there is a real effect on a person’s life even when a small inconvenience occurs, so we fix it quickly and efficiently, with compassionate for the resident.
2. Be proactive today, save time tomorrow
Being proactive is a helpful hack in all areas of our work, but particularly with community maintenance. By consistently keeping areas clean and maintained and checking up on our building appliances before issues arise, our teams save an incredible amount of time (and money) in the long run. Cutting corners will always come back to bite you. By holding ourselves to proactive community maintenance practices, we have less serious issues. When needed, we can make fixes before they become a disturbance to our residents.
3. The difference is in the details
One of our long-standing points of pride is our detail-oriented approach. A resident may not specifically notice how thoroughly their kitchen was cleaned when they moved in, or how polished the fresh coat of paint looks in their bedroom, but all of those details will contribute to a positive and excited feeling when they get settled into their new home. When a five-star level of maintenance is always used, it truly sets the living experience apart as exceptional. Details cannot be underestimated.
4. Attitude sets the tone
Our service professionals embody one of our company principles in particular, “choose the right attitude.” Because service team members have frequent interaction and face time with residents, they are an incredibly important representation of who we are as a company, and they have a significant impact on the resident living experience.
The positive, welcoming and customer-centric attitude of our service team members can make the difference in a resident’s everyday elevator ride, maintenance repair or pool visit. These little interactions can brighten someone’s day, and choosing the right attitude is contagious.
5. Consistency adds up
One well-completed maintenance request followed by a mediocre one does not balance out to create a good experience. However, consistent quality completion of maintenance requests over time creates trust, and trust leads to brand loyalty.
Upholding the consistency of your service standards is a key part of being successful. Rare mistakes happen, but if the rest of your service has been consistently exceptional, residents will trust your service and be understanding.
6. Collect your kudos
Picture this: You have just completed a maintenance request quickly and efficiently, and the resident is grateful for your help. This is a great opportunity to politely suggest that the resident could share their feedback in an online review.
Review reputation is critical for multifamily communities, but when residents are satisfied, they may not go out of their way to post a review online. However, following a positive tenant experience, it is an appropriate and opportune time to capture their genuine kudos.
About the Author:
Kris Servidio is the senior associate director of facilities and support for Mark-Taylor Residential. He provides strategic oversight for Mark-Taylor’s service and facilities teams, who support more than 20,000 units with residents across Arizona and Nevada.
