Friday, April 2, 2010

Property Mangers a way to cut back phone calls and emails

Property Managers, a FREE method to cut your workload, phone calls while making customers even happier.
By Steve Hoogenakker
As I was cleaning out emails from 2009, I noticed I had about 100 emails from a multi-family townhome customer from this summers’ service. Wow, I thought, I didn’t realize we had as many back and forth communications. Besides, this didn’t count the 40-50 phone calls over the 7 month period or my attendance at a few meetings. In addition, when I looked through a few of the emails, it wasn’t uncommon to find that 3-5 people had been in the loop on each email!
An example might be a request to fix a downspout that was crushed. The process started with a client or resident with a call to the president, to the property manager, to me, I would write up our work order, it would come back completed, then I’d email back to the property manager again, he’d contact the homeowner or the client. The inefficiency of this madness is amazing once you think about it, but what can we do?
If it were possible to cut out 1/4 of the emails and time from beginning to end, it would be a fantastic creation, but I’ve found a way to cut out over half, and it’s free (for now).
To do this, we’d have to have a single place where the information resides. A single place accessible by the property manager, the contractor and (optionally) the client or board. We developed a method that works today and it’s free!
1. A spreadsheet is created for a commercial site. The spreadsheet would have 6-7 COLUMNS listed across the top 1. ASSOCIATION NAME 2. WORK ORDER #,3. DATE, 4.SERVICE REQUEST DESCRIPTION, 5.WORK ORDER RECEIVED (by contractor) 6.WORK ORDER COMPLETED, and 7.COMPLETION NOTES.
2. The file is uploaded and converted into Google Docs (free). You can then share it with whomever you wish. It’s easily done by inviting people to join using email addresses. Maybe the head of the grounds maintenance committee, president, property manager and contractor. If you want it available to the clients or the whole board, you can easily set permissions that allow the primary people to edit and update it, or just to view it.
3. You can set up notifications so that anytime a change is made you can be notified once a day or immediately. It works like this:

a. The property manager enters in the work order request using your internal work order #. The notification automatically goes to contractor.
b. Worst case, our office prints up the work order, marks the spreadsheet so everyone else knows that the work order was received with the date and sends it out to the field the next day. When completed, the office can enter it in as complete the following day, automatically updating everyone, or the same day if the crew calls it in. Best case scenario is if my operation manager or foreman has a mini-laptop in his truck, he can enter in the completion the minute it’s done! We can immediately markup the spreadsheet, along with any notes. Instead of the client or homeowner calling the pres to the property manager, prop mgr to me, they can view it on the web, and it’s not 9 to 5. It’s 24/7.
c. Everyone can view that the work order was sent, received, date done (or not) and any information. No phone calls were made, no emails were sent. A complete record of all work orders can be kept all year long, although that would be a pretty long spreadsheet.
We saved all of the emails and phone calls. If I have mobile computing, I probably got the work order out into the field and the completion back 1-4 days sooner, and again it’s your favorite price, it’s FREE!
It’s a V-8 slap in the forehead moment. Why hasn’t this been done before?
Google Docs is just releasing a method to upload all kinds of documents. Instead of a spreadsheet, maybe the property manager has an electronic work order. It might be uploaded, shared and updated by me, the contractor the same way as a spreadsheet . As property managers start to customize this idea, I’d love to hear from you and collaborate a method to really tweak this solution to meet your needs. Call me at 763-213-2410 or email me at Steve@Landscape.Pro.
Steve Hoogenakker
Concierge Landscape Environments
7150 Madison Ave
Golden Valley, MN 55427

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