Dwelling on satisfaction

As most apartment dwellers know, tracking down the building manager or landlord when you have a problem is next to impossible. Maybe it's a leaky faucet or a noisy neighbor - whatever it is, they usually don't want to hear about it. Unless, that is, you live in a complex managed by Homecorp, in which case management may just come looking for you to find out if everything is all right.

The Montgomery, Ala., firm manages more than 70 apartment communities nationwide - its strongest presence is in the southeast - serving over 15,000 residents. Its 2-year-old customer satisfaction research effort, the Focus program, includes an annual survey and focus groups with residents. It's part of a company wide commitment to stay in touch with customers, combating rental property management's reputation as uncaring.

Homecorp goes beyond the usual industry practice of surveying customers when they move in and move out, says Bryan J. Rader, general manager of Homecorp Services.

"The Focus program came about when we realized that the rest of the industry was doing an inadequate job by measuring satisfaction at only two contact points, the move-in and move-out. If you focus on your customer only at those points, you will never satisfy them. We felt that if we had a program that required us to focus every day, every hour, every minute on the customer that we would see our customer satisfaction results skyrocket and that has happened."

Satisfaction lowers expenses

The rental housing industry has found that customer focus can lower controllable expenses dramatically. By keeping residents happy, a firm reduces time and money spent on turnover (repainting, recarpeting or repairing to get an apartment back into marketable shape), minimizes the number of unrented units, and saves the costs of marketing and advertising to fill vacancies.

Homecorp still sees value in the move-in and move-out survey. The move-in survey, for example, helps Homecorp get to small problems and fix them before they become longterm drags on satisfaction. Even things such as a nail hole left by a previous resident or a burned out light bulb can create a bad initial impression that stays with the resident.

But the company strives to listen to its customers throughout their residence in a Homecorp community. (All research is done in-house, except data processing. Rader moderates all of the focus groups with residents.) Homecorp sends a customer satisfaction survey to its residents each February. The survey results are presented to community managers in April. "We want to have the information communicated to the entire property together in staff meetings so that everyone buys into the information and realizes that he or she has as much impact on satisfaction as the manager. We want a total buy-in and teamwork in addressing any challenges that come up. We also want them to share in the success."

Rader also moderates a focus group once a year at each of the communities. A random selection of residents is invited to the leasing office in the evening and asked to elaborate on issues raised in the larger survey. "We get a better definition of why they are happy or unhappy. We also ask them to propose solutions to any problems they're facing because often the best solutions come from our residents. We monitor the performance of our proposed solutions, and if they work at one property we may try them at another. If it's not working, we put plans in place to try something else.

"There is so much run-and-hide management in this and other industries. We take the opposite approach and ask residents to come and talk about these issues with us firsthand in a discussion-group setting. We've found that the appreciation they show us for inviting them is significant."

The goal is to measure the residents' contact with Homecorp representatives at every step of the way between move-in and move-out. Any interaction with a Homecorp employee, from chatting with office personnel when paying rent to running into a leasing consultant walking the property, is important.

"We feel that the accumulation of all those contact points adds up to a customer's perceived value of their experience and customer satisfaction. That's what makes us unique and that is what's not being measured by the industry.

"A lot of people don't measure all the components of staff. It's more than how the staff performs overall. We break it down into six or seven categories which include a lot of attitude-related things: willingness to go the extra mile, timeliness, a sense of genuine concern, and their ability to administer policy. If you measure all of those things that gives you a much more comprehensive measure - of how our staff does."

Seek their input

It was important at the outset to seek residents' input on which issues the research should measure, Rader says.

"We're measuring what they perceive as the most important items for us to do well on. That includes things that people may overlook in our business. It may be how they perceive their relationship with their neighbors - that's very important and a lot of management companies overlook it. It's a difficult thing for us to respond to, but it's something that we like to know about."

Measuring specific service aspects makes it easier to act on what the research uncovers, Rader says, citing the satisfaction surveys distributed on restaurant tables and at hotel checkout as examples of reactive rather than proactive research. "They may point out a problem, but by then it's too late. We want to do research that tells us not only if there's a problem but how we can solve it. "

Secret formula

Results of the ongoing program are given to the entire company annually at Homecorp's national seminar and then are passed on to managers, who meet with their respective staffs.

"In running cross tabs we found that ratings of office staff were the single greatest predictor of customer satisfaction. And office staff is the single largest thing we have control over, so we realized that when customers aren't happy we have no one to blame but ourselves. That's the secret formula: to have an office staff that is genuinely concerned with the residents' happiness, is responsive to their needs and is willing to go the extra mile. We're not out to meet expectations, we are out to exceed them, and exceeding expectations is what drives long-term loyalty."

Selected Homecorp managers meet to discuss results from the national satisfaction and employee studies and generate ideas.

Homecorp also measures employee satisfaction, thereby supplying the last part of the customer satisfaction equation. "If you don't have a satisfied employee you can't have satisfied customers. Our associate-satisfaction study focuses on communication between management and associates, personal and professional growth and idea generation for improved satisfaction with work environment, all of which we know have an impact on customer satisfaction."

Satisfaction can be profitable

Like many companies that have taken up the customer satisfaction gauntlet, Homecorp has learned that doing good can mean doing well. "Without a doubt it is much more profitable to focus on satisfying the customer," Rader says. "It's probably the most profitable way to improve your business. The second thing is it's the most rewarding way of doing business, not just for us in the corporate office but the people onsite every day.

"The program has been a huge success, has increased bottom-line profits significantly, reduced turnover, and we've seen satisfaction grow by property in the last two years dramatically."

It's difficult to assess trends at this point, Rader says, due to the newness of the survey and the fact that there isn't a lot of other industry research with which Homecorp's can be compared.

Since the program is only a few years old, wholesale changes aren't in the works. Homecorp is confident that by continually asking residents what's important to them, the company won't lose touch, Rader says. "We don't want to measure the wrong things, and if you're out talking to your customers every year at each of your properties it would be hard to measure the wrong thing. Our goal is to never let our surveys become antiquated.

"Listening to our customers and our associates has been the cornerstone of our success with this program. That listening has generated new ideas and resulted in a stronger bond between us and our residents."