Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

Comment by ryanwaggoner | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

Again, don't take it personally, but I've been doing real estate for the last six years and I've spent tons of time talking to other investors and landlords. I also still rent because the returns in SF for buying are so abysmal. So I've had plenty of exposure to the way the real estate industry works. And the customer service is almost uniformly terrible. I read your statement as saying that you didn't want to make it easier for customers to contact you, because they would just whine and complain about stupid stuff. What makes real estate different than any other industry in this regard? What company with good service is determined to not "make it easier for their customers to complain"?

And there are guys out there doing this right. I've lived in building that had online portals for customers to submit complaints and it didn't seem to be a problem for them. And I've talked to landlords across the country who run extremely efficient operations with low marketing costs, low vacancies, and high rents because they kick ass for their customers.

Please don't take offense, but you are going to run into tenants eventually who will call you DAILY to fix things or complain. Maybe they feel the bedroom is colder today than yesterday, or they saw a spider in front of the building, or maybe they don't like the shape of the clouds overhead on Thursdays.

Until you rent to enough people to start getting these renters, you've been isolated.

Every business has these kinds of customers. Hopefully your only plan for dealing with them is not to make it more difficult for all of your customers to contact you, including the 99% who never bother you.

Nope. We answer the phone the same for everyone. And we already have a web portal that does all of this. But none of our customers use it. They want to complain in person or over the phone.

I get that making it easier to file complaints can be bad, but there seems to be a software solution here. Things like prioritizing the work orders from tenants that seldom file complaints, or use the work order history to calculate to total cost of the tenant and price the lease renewal accordingly. This might all be impractical for legal reasons, but having the data seems like a good first step to solving the problem.

I think one issue here is that the majority of tenants do not see entering in a work order online as a viable or quick resolution. If someone's toilet overflows at 3am, they need someone awake and responding right then if possible. To them, entering a request for plumbing repair seems like getting in line at the DMV, and to be honest, it would feel like that to me as well.

Not decrying a software solution, but while I pay almost every bill online, most of the tenants I've had just pay cash or check, and we have an online option.

I stayed at a place where you could place online work orders. That was a much better interface than calling up. I did not place more work orders because of it, but I did them sooner. So, the number of days that the garbage disposal did not work or the smoke alarm battery remained dead went way down. It shouldn't be difficult to screen for spurious work orders such as "dangerous spiders".

I think the secret to great customer service is to avoid the low end of the marketplace. My apartment complexes website does all of this stuff this stuff. Yet, I have submitted less than 1 work order a year for the last five years because well maintained appliances rarely break. They might charge more than the competition but vacancy rates are something like 3% for a reason.

You forgot to mention that their tenant turnover is much lower which drastically reduces their marketing overhead ;)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com