How did you come off saying that our customer service is bad? Thats a pretty big jump without knowing me or our business.

Dont assume that because we dont want to induce more work orders / complaints that we have bad service.

What you are saying is "bad" is akin to me asking why sites dont have a "Dissatisfied? Click here for a refund" button on every page. Providing absolute ultimate customer service will cause you to go out of business. Customers will take you to the cleaners if they can get away with it and you need to have boundaries to stay afloat. You can find a great middle ground and keep everyone happy doing it also.

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 ;)

Dan, all of your comments in this thread seem to assume that if you can't hear a customer's complaint it's not a real complaint; and, more importantly, that if you can hear a customer's complaint you have to fix it.

Just like any business, you have to set boundaries on how much you will do for free. But why not set those boundaries intelligently, based on how the customer's actual desires match up with your ability to provide services?

@ryan

Sure, There is a line somewhere to be crossed/not crossed. The only example I can give is maybe along the lines of google. There is no support whatsoever, yet people remain happy for the most part when things break. People love google. But you cant call and complain- You have to jump through a few hoops and fill out forms first. Thats all I am saying- If you make things too easy, your costs will go up with no additional return on revenue in either the short or long term.

Google may not have an easy support system, but it's unrealistic to expect expert service from free products/utilities. When you're paying anywhere from $500-several thousand dollars a month for something, I think you're entitled to complain as often as you're upset and should be able to expect things to be taken care of.

Adsense doesnt have phone support and significant money changes hands there.

It may not be bad, but it sounds like there's zero accountability. If I ask my building manager to fix a leaky faucet, there's no paperwork, and if he ignores me for two months, what's my recourse - assuming that my property owners aren't as on the ball as you and your dad?

That's why you have a lease. It should outline the manager's responsibilities re: maintenance. Your options for recourse are numerous, from filing a lawsuit to not renewing your rent and moving on.

Yes, your options for recourse are numerous and likely to cause YOU significant pain.

Why should my option be "Sue or pay thousands of dollars to move" if the landlord just elects not to fix something?

Which is true regardless. What point are you trying to make?

Sure, but you don't have any paper trail proving that you made any of these requests, unless you actually make your own paperwork, make copies, and submit that.

@pinksoda

We fix sinks and whatnot right away- If you dont,they only become bigger issues. :)

Its stuff like "Can I have 13 small dogs in my apartment" that gets to you.

Maybe something in a WO System could be intelligent help... Do some natural language searching to see what kind of question is being asked, and provide a canned response.

So, "Can I have [more then \d+|a dog|\d+ cats]" automatically gets them a "Your lease only allows for 2 small animals. Does this answer your question?" type response.

If they can't ask, you'll find out they just got their 14th dog, though. It's enough to make a man screaming from landlording - oh wait - I did!

I do not know either of those things. However, you are a landlord. To me, it is highly likely that your customers don't like your customer service.

I have hated every single landlord I've ever had. They have no online payment systems. I can't lodge tickets easily. I have no transparency if work is being done, if my ticket is moving.

The reason your customers whine is because they LIVE in those properties. You're making a fair chunk of money from having someone live there, and for the most part it seems the estate agents just want to take their cut and have the customers leave them alone.

It's so prevalent that I now assume it's the default case for real estate: sucking.

IANAL, but wouldn't the correct analogy actually be a website placing a "need help?" button on their page? Which is of course common.

I think he was trying to say that you should want to help your customers. You should be happy to receive a work order from them because now they are a satisfied tenant that can praise your apartments to their friends who have been trying to get their sink fixed for a month.

My friend is a renter and he has wanted a renters interface like this for years.

> I think the last thing we would want is to make it easier for the tenant to complain about things.

and

> "Dissatisfied? Click here for a refund"

are options that are miles apart. When you said that you don't want to maintain an easier communication channel with your paying customer, it is a good sign that customer service isn't your greatest selling point. One doesn't need to buy every product in a shop for 10 years before concluding whether the service is good or bad. A few customer reviews / purchases should suffice.

slumlord

That's not productive :)

Dan isn't a bad guy, I can almost guarantee you. Tenants can be difficult to deal with, and there's just a certain status quo in the industry that everyone has come to accept. I'm just saying that there's a better way, and things like RentPost.com and RentMonitor.com are a step in the right direction.

Thanks ryan.

This does bring up an interesting concept though we can look into... The ability to disable the work order functionality.

Thanks Dan :), and if you ever want go w/ us, just hit me up and we can work a special price up for you for your contribution - Lee

Fourth time I've flagged a comment on HN iirc.

Congratulations. Calling someone a slumlord just because they own property and are willing to discuss their business online does not give you the right to slander them.

I see the customer service issues in the real estate industry (especially property management) as being created by two issues (and disclosure: I've worked in real estate for the past 11 years, from the front desk to franchise ops manager to consulting back to the industry):

* High staff turnover * Procedures that suck staff time, instead of supporting them

Being a property manager is, for the most part, an awful job. If you sell real estate, you deal with the owner giving you grief; when you manage a property you have the owner, the tenant, and the suppliers all wanting a piece of your time, and rarely to say thank you. Because you don't need to be a rocket surgeon to work in PM, the pay is low, and most staff are young people looking for something better. When they leave, they take with them most of the corporate memory about the tenant and the property. If you hate your property manager, chances are it's because several times in the past year you've called and been put through to a different person every time.

Lack of procedures is linked to lack of investment in this part of the business (also reflected in low salaries and high staff turnover). Most real estate offices are run by salespeople, current or former. They see one sales commission worth $000s as being infinitely better than one tenancy worth $16 / week. So they don't invest in systems, processes, staff development, or great software. This is the market hole you speak of - but while there's a gap in the market, there may not be a market in the gap...

...EXCEPT that, ironically, a rent roll is traditionally the only asset a real estate business has to sell - without it, you just have a sales team who could go next door and open up tomorrow. PM departments also provide a regular income when sales decrease, which has been the case over the past two years in most of the world affected by the recession / GFC. I don't have enough evidence to support a claim that owners are more willing to invest in their team, particularly property management, as a result of this; but I hope it's the case.

Rocket surgeon. Great mixed metaphor. :-)

But not a new one: "Rocket Surgery Made Easy", by Steve Krug, http://amzn.com/0321657292

Yes, I claim no originality. I just find it useful to insert mid-rant, because it lightens my tone (and tests who's listening / reading!).

The problem is the landlord-tenant relationship is asymmetrical. As a tenant you want to live in a particular place, whether its for location, or amenities, or price etc.

When you lease an apartment, the landlord's record of customer service is almost never a factor in signing the lease. It just never comes up. And the cost of moving is so high that its unlikely someone will leave a unit because the landlord sucked (I know this from experience). So the landlord doesn't have to compete with other landlords based on customer service, they compete based on the price, location and amenities of the units they offer.

So there's really no incentive for most landlords to be better landlords. The only ones who try, are mostly just doing it to follow the law or out of a sense of fairness.

The market just doesn't really reward landlords enough for their customer service ability...

I've lived abroad quite a bit and when you're not sure how long you will be in a city renting is pretty much the only option unless the local turnover is very high (and barring market collapse).

As a consequence I've had a fair number of landlords over the years, from owners that let out the top floor of the house they owned to apartments in high-rises.

The funny thing is that there is no hard and fast rule that says landlords can't be great, I've had absolutely fantastic landlords and really terrible ones and not always in the place where you'd expect them.

Online reviews fix that. 200 times "hated the landlord, terrible service" says a lot.

This response indicates to me that you truly do not understand what it's like to manage a building with hundreds of tenants. It's not that I don't want to fix real problems (broken sink, heat, disposal, etc) but I can tell you that if have this accessible of a system its only going to make a landlords life worse. Perhaps if you had an option to send in a work-order based on a set of predetermined orders that the tenant could only check off and submit rather than an open comment box it would make my life easier. However, giving my tenants an open forum to tell me they want a new coat of paint, or to install an ac, or fix a small dent is going to make my life a living hell.

Disclosure: I spend 8-10 hours a day managing and talking to other landlords.

Question: without testing, how do you know that an automated "accessible system... its only going to make a landlords life worse" ?

Have you evidence this is true? I work with web hosting and clients can send support tickets at any time, but rarely do. They have the option of asking infinite questions such as, I made a change why did my website break, why is my site not in google for [insert impossible keyword here], I want to change the background color, why is the email from my mom spam... but it almost never happens.

I think any business with strong customer lock-in, infrequent purchase decision, and an immutable monthly cost/revenue evolves into a business where the company tries to minimize support. Think of the level of support you get at a bank, cell phone company, etc. Awful.

I'm not sure about the opportunity there. If you spent 2x on support costs, what would you get out of it? Tons of referrals when people are moving out? Probably not-- movers are busy and rarely have friends handy who are in that rare moment of hunting for an apt/condo.

Now, SERVICES on the other hand... Certainly there's room for apartment buildings that have great gyms, social events, etc.

What happens if your support is bad? Turnover increases and finding new tenant is not cheap. There is always a flip-side.

I'd like to start off with saying that most HN members are NOT the typical renters that landlords deal with.

Most HNers are very intelligent, hard working and understanding/reasonable. (Correct me if I'm wrong.) Not all renters are like that.

Unless you've been a landlord or worked closely with one, it's hard to understand some of the frustrations of dealing with renters. Owning property is not the same as being a landlord.

Some things that we'd think are unreasonable, a renter might think is reasonable. I've had one renter try to not extend lease AND not pay for new month's rent, just because they were only staying for 2 weeks of new month. It's not the landlord's fault they didn't secure a new place in time. The final compromise was to allow them to pay 2 weeks rent. Did it work? No. Think it's easy to get people to pay? No. Think the eviction process is simple and quick? NO.

I think this app would work best in places with atypical renters. Places where the rent is higher than market and the price covers the landlord's time to deal with everything.