Date: Wednesday, February 29 at 12:00pm EST

Presenters: Matt Brogie, Owner of Mobility CIO  •  Tim Curran, CEO of Vela Systems  •  Lisa Panzenhazen, Medical Leasing & Property Manager of Kirco

Building Operations in Your Pocket

Must-have mobile strategies for modern real estate organizations

Mobility has become an essential component of efficient building operations. Real estate organizations that provide property managers and field personnel with mobile access to applications and wireless data are more productive, deliver better customer service, schedule more timely maintenance, and respond more nimbly to changes in their operating environment. Learn more.

In this free webinar for senior management and operations executives, our panelists will share how to utilize mobile technologies to:

• Alleviate key business pressures: reduce costs, maximize worker efficiency, and increase the longevity of capital assets
• Improve tenant service by proactively monitoring tenant needs and addressing them quickly through mobile technology
• Maximize Productivity

In the property management and building operations space, management is expected to be out there with tenants- not tied to their desk- answering questions and solving problems in real time.

-Matt Brogie, Owner of Mobility CIO

The Fiery 5 in Fire & Life Safety:

1. Video (1:38)

3 Must-Do Fire & Life Safety Activities

Peter Harrod of RJA outlines three important steps to take when assessing your Fire & Life safety system, features and compliance.

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2. Microsite

Assessing the Condition of Your Fire & Life Safety Systems

View the complete Conquering the Code webinar presentation, bonus videos, a sample Fire & Life Safety Assessment Report, resource links, and more Risk Management tools!

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3. Video (2:07)

Potential Costs of Not Following FLS Best Practices

Peter Harrod of RJA speaks to the risk involved when fire life safety due diligence isn’t achieved.

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4. Blog Post

10 Biggest Mistakes People Make with Fire & Life Safety Systems… And How to Avoid Them

Fire & Life Safety systems are in place because unplanned incidents and mistakes happen. Those mistakes shouldn’t be the way you use your system. See if you’re guilty of the 10 common mistakes building owners and managers make with their Fire & Life Safety systems.

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5. On-Demand Webinar (35:40):

Conquering the Code with Peter Harrod, Fire Protection Engineer at RJA

This complimentary webinar will share how to recognize deficiencies in your equipment, identify code violations, and plan the retroactive and forward thinking changes that will attract and retain tenants, mitigate risk and positively position your property for resale.

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Manage fire & life safety, visitor access, incidents, certificates of insurance and more with Building Engines Risk Management Tools.

Roses are red,

Violets are blue,

When occupancy is down,

So are you.

Feeling a little lonely in your building this Valentine’s Day? Not quite the tenant magnet you’d like to be? Experiencing unrequited love for your customers?

This Valentine’s Day, spend some time examining how to woo tenants into your building and build a deep and meaningful relationship with them. (Cue Tony Bennett music)

1. Look Online

Today’s tech-savvy tenants expect an online option to interact with building management. You should assume ALL your tenants are online, and that is where they like to do their research and get things done. According to Sirius Decisions, 70% of all B2B buying decisions are researched and made online before a company representative is ever involved. Tenant expectations have changed.   They expect property management to provide them with modern, online communication tools that mirror the way they do business- online and in real-time.

Additionally, you can and should control your online brand.  When prospective tenants search for your building online what do they see? Good reviews? Bad reviews? An out of date services listing?  CRE firms will help themselves  in the battle to attract tenants and keep them by embracing technology that enables them to find you, as well as following and controlling their brand online.  The brokerage side of the business has embraced this, and management should too – taking care to align information, messaging and tools between the two.

LinkedIn and Twitter are the eHarmony of property management. Tweets, status updates, and group discussions can position you as an industry expert and create another venue for tenants to reach you. Make a company LinkedIn page and encourage your employees to create a profile. Provide an internal process document that governs language to use on profiles so that they are consistent with the corporate page. Identify groups employees should belong to and the conversations they should monitor. Personal accounts on Twitter and LinkedIn create a more accessible and humanized image than a corporate profile alone.

Blogging is another way to attract and retain tenants.  While 40% of all companies utilize blogs, CRE has been much slower to adopt. Don’t count blogging out- it is a powerful tool to get in front of prospects, demonstrate your knowledge, build your brand, and give customers some lovin’.

2. Meet Their Expectations- Real-Time Access to Information and Service On-Demand

Don’t be a wallflower! Get yourself out there – be visible, transparent, and informative. We’ve already established that tenants are online, and that they expect to control access to information and make value judgments before ever picking up the phone to speak to you. Some of those value judgments are going to be related to how “tech savvy” you are as an organization and building/management team. Tenants also expect the option to interact with building management in real-time. The elements and tools you should have in place to help influence those judgments include:

• Corporate and Property websites: Your property website is the perfect place to make announcements, showcase building services and garner feedback
• Online Resource Scheduling: Enable your tenants to book conference rooms, elevators, and loading docks- freeing you from repetitive scheduling tasks and allowing you to focus on more valuable tenant interactions.
• Tenant Handbook: Bring your handbook and other building documents online. This will increase management visibility and improve occupant safety, service and communication.
• Visitor Access: Tenants in secure buildings expect to quickly and easily pre-authorize visitors for entry into the building and a have a real-time connection to the security guard check-in station in the lobby
• Online Work Order Management: Tenants want to be able to submit requests, access information and receive communications online (from a web browser or mobile device), quickly and easily. The availability of information and insight into progress ensures tenants feel better about the service they receive and professionalism of the property.
• Social Media presence: LinkedIn, Twitter, etc. (these provide an invaluable way to both personally interact with tenants, but also proactively take their pulse). Tools like dlvr.it and Hootsuite allow you to manage, sync and update your social media outlets.
• YouTube: Ever thought about showcasing videos of that fancy new lobby renovation? How about vacant space?

3. Master Communication

Communication is a two-way channel. A communication system includes both tools and philosophy. You need a way for tenants to communicate their issues, including a Tenant Service Request Work Order System. You also need a way to share building information, emergency notifications, and new initiatives or changes.

Here is how you should align your tenant communications with distinct systems and tools:

• Emergencies: Broadcast messaging, Emergency Messaging Systems
• Non-Emergency Events: Tenant Portals (property websites, tenant handbook, online building documents)
• Green Initiatives, Personnel Information, etc.: Blogs, Social Media
• Building Amenities, Instructions, Vacant Space: Video! YouTube

Email is not enough. A phone call two hours after a service request has been made is not enough.

4. Stay Connected – The Honeymoon Isn’t Over

Give your tenants a reason to renew their vows leases.

Proactively Monitor Tenant Satisfaction. Schedule, document and capture all visits and calls with the tenant contact on site and the lease renewal decision maker. All this information should be stored in a single location – a Property and Tenant management system allows for this capability. It is only valuable if it is easily retrieved and web-based.

Do smaller surveys. The annual Kingsley survey is fine, but you should utilize regular surveys to ask your tenants questions regarding service or decisions you are contemplating. Base decisions on data!

Provide outlets for feedback. People prefer to share information in a variety of ways and it’s important to try to accommodate them. Beyond phone calls and emails, think about things like community forums accessible through your corporate or building website, as well as live help or chat links from your website.

Feeling the love? Read more about Using Technology to Maximize Occupancy.

525,000 moments so dear.

525,600 minutes

How do you measure, measure your response time?

Unfortunately, few will appreciate it if you try to measure response time in love. Like most people, the higher ups, prospects, and tenants like to hear numbers – real numbers. This makes maintaining accurate response time metrics is a high priority for most property managers.

Let’s take minute to think about this. Are you certain your data is truly representative of what is happening in the field? Unless your engineers are updating their work orders at the time of their work, there is a good chance your data is not as accurate as it could be.

Turkey's red flag

In order for a response time report to be truly representative of what is happening in the field, the engineer overseeing the work order needs to be updating it in close proximity to their actions. Unfortunately, teleportation still hasn’t been invented [NASA, what have you been up too??] and in the real world, property managers frequently bear witness to a complex work order progressing from new to complete in a matter of minutes. This should raise a flag redder than Turkey’s.

This all too common scenario is typical of an engineer who has waited to update their work orders until the end of the day. In all reality, unless you’ve provided your engineer with a viable way to stay on top of their workload, and maintain accurate times for their work, can you really blame them?

This is where the mobile application comes into play. If your engineers currently have smartphones, than there is little barrier to spot on metrics. Recent advancements in smartphone application technology have given engineers the ability to regularly update work orders, see the latest comments, and receive new work orders, all in real time. This enables not only productivity**, but also quick work order turnaround and accurate metrics.

So forget Rent’s “in daylight, in sunsets, in midnights, in cups of coffee,” measure in real time – with mobile!

**So long as users resist Words With Friends

Like Rent references? There’s more where that came from: Echo-Boomers’ Booming Impact on Rental

]]> http://blog.buildingengines.com/2012/02/are-your-response-time-metrics-as-accurate-as-they-should-be/feed/ 0 http://blog.buildingengines.com/2012/02/8-ways-to-improve-your-service-reponsiveness/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=rss http://blog.buildingengines.com/2012/02/8-ways-to-improve-your-service-reponsiveness/#comments Thu, 09 Feb 2012 15:10:33 +0000 Katherine Fawcett http://blog.buildingengines.com/?p=2190 Would you listen to property management professionals who could boast over 90% occupancy in their buildings? We would and we did and we’re here to share our results!

We surveyed top performers in property & tenant management for their general beliefs, current processes and opinions of best practices around service responsiveness. What we found might surprise you!

It was no surprise that the vast majority of top performers consider tenant service and responsiveness a market differentiator – 92% agreed with that statement. Service responsiveness is not only critical to tenant retention and attraction, but also to protection against litigation. A fast response time means fast advice, fast action and fast damage mitigation. You know it’s important, so how do you now improve it?

From our compilation report and inspection of top performers, here are eight best practices demonstrated by the best-in-class buildings:

Get the full Service Responsiveness Benchmark Report for free with industry standards and best practices!

You may also be interested in:

Retaining with Responsiveness, Be Our Guest

Here’s a Resolution: Improve Responsiveness to Tenant Requests

How to Rock Occupancy with Technology

One trend that we continue to see is that the inspection testing and maintenance of fire life safety systems generally are deferred entirely to the fire alarm and fire life safety contractors. On the surface that is the right expectation and those folks should be servicing your systems. However, the challenge is that the contractors oftentimes are providing quality and documentation that is less than what is otherwise required by the applicable codes and standards for all life safety systems that we have in our existing facilities.

You can now watch the webinar highlights in our Executive Summary (8:43):

Like options? Access the full webinar On-Demand, read the transcript, or download the mp3!

Manage fire & life safety, visitor access, incidents, certificates of insurance and more with Building Engines Risk Management Tools.

Get the most out of every tenant meeting!

Creating a great tenant experience that builds loyalty and fosters retention is essential in today’s economic climate. Yet, measuring tenant satisfaction is tricky and often requires a three-pronged attempt:

1. Formal measurement through surveys
2. Informal face-to-face interaction
3. Proactive, scheduled tenant meetings

Explores the key ways you can utilize tenant meetings and measure satisfaction to get informed, improve satisfaction, and preserve income.

Read the full article: Happy Tenants, Healthy Building!

Use tenant meetings as an opportunity to showcase your service. Point out any services that might have been extended at no cost and as a courtesy beyond the scope of the lease.

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**Remember** The most effective retention plans are proactive and documented!

Learn how Building Engines can help you improve tenant service.

According to Bizmology, Jones Lang LaSalle claims that NFL teams are two-thirds more likely to win the Super Bowl if they are based in cities with a high percentage of empty office space. So while a city’s real estate may be depressed, it’s sports fans won’t be.

Just remember when making your winning pick this Sunday that commercial office vacancy rates are lower and have decreased in greater New York in Q4 2011 compared to the increased rate in Greater Boston. Oh, and I would also factor in Tom Brady’s knack for winning and perfect spiral too!

Go Pats!!

1. He keeps all his balls in the air.

2. Talk about preparedness!

3. He has no problem with retention.

4. He’s all about good service and fast responsiveness.

5. He’s improved net operating [income].

6. With over 2 million YouTube hits in a day, he’s a social media marketing maven!

One way you should not emulate the ball boy: leave out the silly hat.

Watch him steal the spotlight from Nadal and R-Fed:

That is the one major, elastic characteristic tenants consider when looking for a space: exceptional service. My advice for keeping tenants in your building is to leverage the factors you can control: service response time and quality.

You don’t need to sing and dance for tenants à la Lumière, but you do need to respond to their service requests. Here’s how to maximize the process:

Insights from industry expert Patrick Braswell:

Video (2:08): Improving Responsiveness to Tenant Requests

Presented by Patrick Braswell, Tenant Representation Specialist

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Want more? Read Improving Responsiveness to Tenant Requests. If that doesn’t work, try the gray stuff – it’s delicious.

Visit our website for more information on tenant retention strategies, managing  service response times or bringing your program online.