Selecting an After Hours Telephone Answering Service for your Apartment Complex or Property Management Company

Apartment complex managers and property management companies must take great care to ensure they select the proper telephone answering service or after hours emergency call center to handle tenant issues quickly, correctly, and professionally. A single tenant represents tens of thousands of dollars in revenue per year. If rentable space is left empty due to poor customer service issues, the losses could be substantial. With a variety of options available for companies to handle after hours emergencies and customer service issues, the solutions available can be confusing and time consuming. To narrow the choices, there are three basic service options organizations can choose from to provide them with after hours care. The first is a fully automated solution. In other words, menu driven options with the capabilities of paging an oncall maintenance person. The second option is a partially automated solution with live operators to assist if necessary. This is another menu driven option that provides a live operator should the person want to speak with a person immediately. This provides a combination of good customer service while keeping costs associated with the answering service or call center at minimal levels. The third option is to always reach a live person. This option has the call routed to a live individual 24/7/365. Speaking to a live person will give the highest level of quality service to tenants, however is the least economical of the three choices.

Telephone Answering Service & Apartment Complex Property Management Key Success Factors

• Take full advantage of the capabilites of the call center or telephone answering service.
• Maintain consistent contact with the telephone answering service manager(s) or account representatives.
• Ensure quality controls are in place for both companies.
• Contingency plans are essential.

Let's take a look at each of the above facets indvidiually:

The Apartment Complex Needs to Become Familiar With the Capabilities of the Call Center

Apartment complexes come in all shapes in sizes. Companies can have 1000s of seats or a single operator. Certain traits are beneficial to call centers of both sizes. Service updates and immediate attention are generally given by smaller companies that don't have their resources dedicated over thousands of businesses. Reliability and professionalism generally tend to be a trait found more often in larger call centers, and the larger call centers will typically have more functionality and capabilities. Knowing the capabilities of the call center is crucial. The modern telephone answering service has a variety of options to ensure the proper person is contacted for specific types of calls, at the correct interval, on the correct means (cell phone, digital pager, etc). Ensuring the call center has the following capabilites will help promote seamless communications between the answering service and the property management company - providing the best customer service.

• Online Account Integration - Specifically with regards to handling account call routing. Advanced answering services (such as Answerphone of America) possess the ability to have customers directly update the oncall maintenance personnel or managers in their actual answering computer system. Doing so eliminates the possibility of contacting the wrong person and wasting valuable time. Traditional answering services simply have had customers call in to operators to update the oncall. This method is not only more prone to errors, but also increases the costs of the answering service, as most answering services base the cost of their services on operator time usage. Other online integration advantages include: message retrieval and the ability to monitor operator performance. These tools combine to provide seamless customer service applications that will keep current tenants happy and ensure prospective tenants have a good initial impression of the company.
• Tree Scripting or Call Scripting - Tree scripting is a buzzword of call centers. It means that the call center has the ability to not only script the information gathered in a call and what the operator requests of the caller, but also has the ability to program the routing of the call once the operator has collected the information. The best way to imagine scripting, is simply to imagine a flow chart. The operator views a screen that gives him or her menu options. For instance, a call can be a maintenance request call or a new tenant request call. The operator would then select the proper option, and be taken to a new screen that has a customized template of information that he or she is to gather. Once this information is gathered, the system itself will then decipher how to route and deliver the call. It will either take an automated action, such as paging or text messaging, or it will instruct the operator who to contact, at what interval to contact them at, and what means to contact them on (i.e. cell phone, home phone, etc). These safeguards ensure the proper information is collected and given to the correct individual and removes the possibility for errors that traditional services are prone to.

Maintain consistent contact with the telephone answering service manager(s) or account rep

The best call centers recommend contact between the telephone answering service and property managers at least 1 time per month. The leaders within the companies should conduct monthly conference calls to keep everyone abreast to the happneings of the acocunt. It will also build a better and long standing relationship with the company who will have a big impact on the levels of customer service the apartment complex will provide. Everything from live operator time efficiency, operator voice and tone quality, as well as reviewing the apartment complex's own employee response times can be thoroughly reviewed. All of this information is very beneficial to providing top quality care. Communications between the two companies is essential to providing tenants with the care they require.

Ensure quality controls are in place for both the answering service and apartment complex

Speed is nothing without control. Quality controls must be in place to uphold service levels within both companies. Also, it is not enough to simply say that you have service goals within a telephone answering service or apartment complex, they must be goals that are repeatedly checked and seen in the way calls are handled on a daily basis. On the operator side, taking the proper information while providing prompt and courteous service are key. Operators should be reviewed on a monthly basis to make sure they are provinding top quality service. Likewise, on the apartment complex side of the equation, owners/managers need to make sure their on call maintenance folks are promptly returning calls to tenants in need of assistance. Both companies must work in unison to provide the best quality service possible, and have the proper checks and balances in place to track such information.

Contingency plans are essential

Make sure the call center you select for customer service care has redundant phone lines, power sources, and computer systems. Not only should the telephone answering service have contingency plans in place for power outages, computer issues, or phone line problems, but there also be backup plans in place should problems occur interenally with the accountl. Who to contact if there is ever a question of who might be on call or the on call list hasn't been updated. Many issues that arise will call centers can be easily prevent, thereby preventing any interruption of service.

Conclusion

Finding an answering service for after hours emergency care can be a complicated process. Locating an answering service that provides all of the above services for a competitive rate, such as Answerphone of America, can be a time consuming process. It is recommended that you design a checklist and order the above key success factors in order of importance. Then call a telephone answering service representative and see what type of service offerings they have.

To reach a sales representative for Answerphone, please click here or call 800-308-3387.