Benefits of Customer Support Software for Property Management

Customer service is at the heart of any property management business. When done well, customer service increases resident satisfaction, loyalty, and retention. In today’s digital age, residents are looking to the web to get answers instantly. They also look up to their management company to provide them with quick and reliable support. That’s why it’s important to give your residents an easy way to find answers. When they do reach out to you, tracking their requests on sticky notes and spreadsheets isn’t enough. Your team needs a more efficient way to organize these requests so you can deliver reliable and fast support. Enter customer support software.

Customer support software helps you to organize your customer support requests from start to finish. In this post, we focus on the benefits customer support software brings to your property management business.

What is Customer Support Software?

Customer support software is a set of tools that enables companies to better assist their customers. It also tracks the journey of customer support issues from start to finish so your staff members have all the information they need to deliver the best experience.

At a basic level, customer support software helps businesses to:

• 1) Keep track of incoming customer requests and issues.
• 2) Help managers stay organized and accountable.
• 3) Maintain a history of important customer data to cut down the time it takes to solve an issue.
• 4) Provide customers with self-service capabilities.
• 5) Make important business decisions with reports.

Benefits of Customer Support Software

Customer support software offers companies a simpler way to manage customer requests and keep their team aligned. Let’s talk about how a customer support platform can benefit your company.

1) An easy way for residents to get in touch with you

Residents will frequently come to you with a question, issue, complaint, or suggestion. It’s vital to give them a channel where they can be heard. Customer support software enables residents to submit a support request, attach relevant files, get status updates, and communicate with their manager.

2) Help residents help themselves

In a digital-first world, residents expect to find information in an instant. According to recent studies, 89% of millennial customers will conduct an internet search to find the answers they need before calling the company. As more millennials become homebuyers, it’s important to create a knowledge base that is searchable and answers their questions.

Customer support software enables your business to have a presence 24×7 even if your managers can’t physically be there to answer phone calls or emails. This puts less strain on your call center or client service team. You’ll also increase resident satisfaction, as they can quickly find the information they’re looking for.

3) Manage company and community knowledge

A knowledge base also streamlines the knowledge and learning of important processes in your company or community.

When managers have a well-stocked knowledge base, it can save them time in responding to resident support tickets. It also helps an after-hours staff member to quickly find important information when dealing with residents.

Change is part and parcel of managing a property or community management business. When a manager or board member leaves, you can use a knowledge base to train new members. This is instrumental in getting a manager or board member up to speed so they can deliver the best customer service to residents.

4) Keep your team organized and accountable

To deliver on the promise of fast and reliable customer service, your team needs a way to organize and prioritize incoming tickets. Customer support software makes it simple to assign tickets, prioritize them, and set a due date. That way, each manager is accountable for their work. Having a customer support platform in place improves team communication so that nothing is lost in translation. All managers can work together on one platform to give residents the best customer service.

5) All customer data in one place

When you’re working to resolve a support ticket, it’s important to have context for the issue you’re handling. That way, you can provide the resident with an accurate solution.

A customer support platform when integrated within your property management software will allow you to track information at a unit or person level. Consider the types of information you can use to resolve support issues faster:

• 1) Other occupants in the unit.
• 2) Payment transaction history and upcoming payments due.
• 3) Lease information.
• 4) Guests
• 5) Pets
• 6) Vehicle
• 7) Insurance
• 8) Previous support and maintenance tickets.

The support solution should also track every action that’s been taken on a support request. This includes when a ticket was assigned or reassigned when a comment was added, or when the status was changed. This information helps to keep your team accountable.

6) Gain insights to run your business more efficiently

Your support team is putting effort to deliver superior customer service to the residents. Now, it’s time to understand the impact of those efforts.

As a business owner or manager, you’ll want to know how those efforts are panning out.

Is one property or community creating more work than another?

Are any property managers overwhelmed with the volume of customer support requests?

A customer support platform gives you vital insights to answer these questions. You’ll be able to find out how many requests your staff is opening or closing in a given timeframe. With this information, you can confidently manage staff workload. These reports also tell you how much work each community is creating. If your team is getting a lot of support requests from a specific community, you may consider increasing rates when it’s time for clients to renew. Also, it’s easier to justify the price increase.

Choosing the best customer support solution for your business

Customer support software is key the day to day operations of your client service team. Now that you have a better understanding of how it can help your property management business, how do you choose one that’s right for you? To help you identify which tool is the best for your company, consider these questions.

1. Can residents easily contact you?
2. Are there any self-service capabilities within the platform so residents can find information on their own?
3. Can you easily manage the wealth of knowledge that your communities or company have?
4. Can you organize and prioritize tasks for your team?
5. Is there an easy way to track and find unit-specific information so you can cut down the time it takes to respond back to them?
6. Can your company executives get business analytics to help them in making important decisions?
7. Is the software easy for your staff, board members, and residents to use?

About Pilera

Pilera Software is a property management software that specializes in communications, maintenance, customer support, resident engagement, and website tools. To learn more, read our full article on Pilera.com.