Call Center for Tenant Maintenance & Emergency Calls

General Landlording & Rental Properties
10yFollow

Call Center for Tenant Maintenance & Emergency Calls

Dan Bosak
Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2010 · 64 posts · 34 votes

I am looking into some options to handle tenant maintenance and especially emergency calls.  I have just over 100 units now and want to create a reliable and scale-able system for these calls (and emails and texts).  

2 Options I am considering: 

1. Hire a Reduced service property manager who would be able to get the calls and send out their own crews as needed.  This is probably the easiest solution but since we don't control it directly, may not be the best to integrate with our system. 

2. Hiring a call center to: receive the calls, determine the issue, decide if it's an emergency or if it can wait until normal business hours, coordinate appropriate contractor (based on my list of approved contractors) and followup with the tenant. 

Ideally, I'd like them to be able to log the info into our current property management system so that we have records of what was done.  

Pat live might be an option but they do not call out, so they will not be as effective with coordinating the repairs,will not followup with either the contractor or tenant to make sure it was handled properly and certainly wont work with our system.  Likewise, my currently property management system is set up to receive texts and emails (which is simpler for a lot of tenants) so I want to keep that as an option.    

Has anyone tried the call center route and if so any suggestions or issues I should look out for?

Any other suggestions for how best to handle the calls?

1Reply
48 views

Most Popular Reply

Phil Earley
Property Manager · Cumming, GA · Member since 2015 · 261 posts · 199 votes
10y

We use Nighttenders for after hour coverage so that we don't completely burn out our maintenance department and to improve on tenant/customer service.    The tenants get a live person on the phone who will initiate the emergency call to our vendors and/or let them know the account has been noted and that our staff will contact them in the morning for the non-emergency items.   We have found this to be more cost effective than implementing the appfolio call center for now.

2Reply
See this reply in the discussion

16 Replies

Jump to latestLatest
  • Christian Wathne
    Investor · San Jose, CA, Bellevue, WA · Member since 2016 · 327 posts · 257 votes
    10y

    Don't have much to contribute; but I would love to see a property management chat bot created. 

    Landlords could configure their list of preferred vendors for various types of issues and the chat bot could talk with tenants, schedule service, or escalate more important issues. 

    0Reply
  • Levi T.Pro Member
    Rental Property Investor · Tucson AZ / Nice FR / Washington DC · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    10y

    You have the numbers so, get Appfolio software to manage your units, payments, etc, and signup for their call center services. boom and boom!

    0Reply
  • Account Closed
    San Jose, CA · Member since 2015 · 4k+ posts · 3k+ votes
    10y
    Originally posted by @Dan Bosak:

    I am looking into some options to handle tenant maintenance and especially emergency calls.  I have just over 100 units now and want to create a reliable and scale-able system for these calls (and emails and texts).  

    2 Options I am considering: 

    1. Hire a Reduced service property manager who would be able to get the calls and send out their own crews as needed.  This is probably the easiest solution but since we don't control it directly, may not be the best to integrate with our system. 

    2. Hiring a call center to: receive the calls, determine the issue, decide if it's an emergency or if it can wait until normal business hours, coordinate appropriate contractor (based on my list of approved contractors) and followup with the tenant. 

    Ideally, I'd like them to be able to log the info into our current property management system so that we have records of what was done.  

    Pat live might be an option but they do not call out, so they will not be as effective with coordinating the repairs,will not followup with either the contractor or tenant to make sure it was handled properly and certainly wont work with our system.  Likewise, my currently property management system is set up to receive texts and emails (which is simpler for a lot of tenants) so I want to keep that as an option.    

    Has anyone tried the call center route and if so any suggestions or issues I should look out for?

    Any other suggestions for how best to handle the calls?

     What are you doing now?  

    How many actual emergency calls do you deal with per month?  I managed 26 units and emergency calls were rare.

    0Reply
  • Dan Bosak
    OP
    Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2010 · 64 posts · 34 votes
    10y

    Thanks Levi, I already have Propertyware set up and they have a call center too but I didn't think there was a good value there since seemed pretty much like Patlive but for more money.  I need to reconfirm exactly what they can and can't do. 

    Sue, there are few true emergency calls but if there is one, it cannot wait until the next business day.  In the past year, we've had hot water heater burst in a basement in a 5-unit building requiring pump out of about 3' of water when caught at midnight, we've had several tenants have heaters break over weekends,etc.  

    The need for 24-hr call center is because of the few emergency calls.  But, a call center in general will create a scaleable system that will provide better service for our tenants and us.  For most tenants, just knowing that their maintenance issue has been received and is scheduled to be handled resolves a lot of the tension and concern.  Additionally, I need a system to track the maintenance so we can be sure that issues are actually resolved.  We have had several issues that get passed to a contractor who calls the tenant but doesn't hear back and a month later, we find out that the issue was never resolved.   This ends up with angry tenants (despite them not returning the call).  

    Our system now is to have all calls route to a single maintenance guy, which is not scaleable and I'd rather have our maintenance guy(s) simply worry about doing the work and not coordinating schedules.

    0Reply
  • Jason Hirko
    Lender · San Antonio, TX · Member since 2016 · 1k+ posts · 1k+ votes
    10y

    @Dan Bosak We looked into something similar to what you're proposing - our idea was to hire a local medical answering service (the kind that can decide if the nurse's after-hours phone call warranted a page to the doctor on call). The idea being that we only wanted our maintenance guy woken up if secondary damage was being caused. It wasn't a full system like you're talking about, but was pretty cheap and would keep our maintenance guy from quitting.

    0Reply
  • Dan Bosak
    OP
    Philadelphia, PA · Member since 2010 · 64 posts · 34 votes
    10y

    @Jason Hirko thanks for the info.  This is an option and would be similar to PatLive who would simply get the call and connect to emergency contact if needed.  For non emergency items, I can have the notice sent to my assistant and she can coordinate the repair the next business day.

    Patlive is inexpensive, around $100/month but they don't call out.

    I asked my assistant to find some details on call centers and found out that she used to work at a call center so she is pulling together specifics for that.  I am leaning toward this option since she can manage the call center and then coordinate with our existing systems and resources.  The cost would be about $300/mn (maybe less).   

    A property manager would cost me $60-70k/year so for that cost I might as well hire my own local staff who can do the property management + other tasks outside of the typical property management scope (i.e. marketing for new properties, processing of new properties pre/post settlement, etc.).   

    0Reply
  • Phil Earley
    Property Manager · Cumming, GA · Member since 2015 · 261 posts · 199 votes
    10y

    We use Nighttenders for after hour coverage so that we don't completely burn out our maintenance department and to improve on tenant/customer service.    The tenants get a live person on the phone who will initiate the emergency call to our vendors and/or let them know the account has been noted and that our staff will contact them in the morning for the non-emergency items.   We have found this to be more cost effective than implementing the appfolio call center for now.

    2Reply
  • Shaun Patterson
    Property Manager · West Palm Beach, FL · Member since 2012 · 296 posts · 143 votes
    9y

    @Dan Bosak we have appfolio right now with their call center service.  It integrates with our software platform so it makes it easy for us to scale and manage the calls coming in. If I had a choice I would look at a system that can integrate with what your using now. Since you don't want to add a extra job just to manage the call center calls coming in. It helps us because the call center is able to send out the request to the correct handy man or contractor on our approved list. It then shows up in our maintenance dashboard. i don't know about propertyware but they would be the first ones I would call since they have a service available. 

    0Reply
  • Will Gordon
    Vendor · Seattle, WA · Member since 2017 · 43 posts · 7 votes
    8y

    Check out Latchel, my company does this service for companies of any size. No minimum!

    1Reply
  • Ryan Deasy
    Lender · Farmington, CT · Member since 2015 · 542 posts · 321 votes
    6y

    Check out RentReddy. This might be what a lot of you are looking for.

    0Reply
  • Stephanie CabralPro Member
    Rental Property Investor · Wethersfield, CT · Member since 2014 · 152 posts · 122 votes
    5y

    @Will Gordon - is latchel available without going through RentRedi? 

    Podcast Guest on Show #360
    0Reply
  • Will Gordon
    Vendor · Seattle, WA · Member since 2017 · 43 posts · 7 votes
    5y
    Originally posted by @Stephanie Cabral:

    @Will Gordon - is latchel available without going through RentRedi? 

    Currently we only offer services directly to companies with 75+ doors under management. If this describes your business, you can book a demo directly with our team on our website. 

    0Reply
  • Stephen Cucc
    Rental Property Investor · Los Angeles, CA · Member since 2012 · 37 posts · 15 votes
    5y

    @Shaun Patterson

    How does AppFollio do answering you tenant calls? We are thinking about having Appfolio call center answer maintenance calls after business hours.

    Any thoughts or suggestions would be greatly greatly

    Stephen

    0Reply
Join the conversationCreate a free account to reply, vote on answers and follow this thread.
Log InJoin for Free