From Feedback to Fulfillment: Transforming Properties with Tenant Surveys

One of the best ways that you can strive to improve your properties, customer service and overall community is to get feedback from the residents! Many times, business owners mistakenly think that if their tenants are not saying anything, then everything is going well. Unfortunately, this is not always the case. Many tenants will “silently suffer” until they just can’t deal with the frustrations of living in their community, or the little things just keep adding up until they decide that they would like to look elsewhere.

Why should it be the property manager’s job to ask the tenants about the quality of their living space or if any issues are arising? Simply put, when they are asked about these things – this allows the tenant to say how they truly feel with hopes that the property managers will listen and address their concerns. Often, tenants will refrain from bringing up issues because they don’t want to seem like a pain or a bother to the staff. It is important to give your tenants the space and opportunity to be able to voice their concerns.

Enhancing Communication Between Tenants and Staff

When you send out surveys for your tenants to provide feedback about their experience in their property, you create a flow of communication where they can feel more comfortable expressing their honest opinions. When a tenant can feel like they are being listened to and their issues are being addressed, they can feel more at ease in their property and living situation. Hearing what your tenants have to say will also allow your team to improve your properties and your customer service. This is vital in maintaining a good relationship with your tenants.

Varieties of Tenant Surveys

There are many different types of surveys that you can send out to your tenants. A general satisfaction survey you can send to all tenants regardless of when they moved in. Move-in and move-out surveys are specific to those who have just moved in. This shows new tenants that the staff cares about how their experience is and creates a bridge of trust between tenant and staff. The move-out surveys help the tenants share how they felt while they lived in the unit and share things that the team can improve for the next tenant.

Another great opportunity to get feedback from your tenants is when maintenance is performed in the apartment. After a work order has been serviced by one of your maintenance technicians, you can reach out to the tenant and send them a post-maintenance survey to get feedback on how their service was, if it was completed to their satisfaction, and how the technician worked regarding respectfulness and professionalism.

Other ideas for when to send out surveys are once around the time summer hits to see how your tenants feel about the landscaping in the complex and once in the winter when there has been snowfall to touch base on how the snow removal crew handled the snow removal services.

Make it Convenient for the Tenants

The last thing you want to do during your busy day-to-day life is answer a ten-page survey. It is great to keep surveys short and compact, to not drive away tenants from answering the questions. A good number of questions is around 5 per survey. If they can answer all the questions and you can collect quality feedback within 1 minute, that is perfect. Having too many questions can make the tenant feel like they have to do too much work and we don’t want to make communicating with them harder than it needs to be.

There are also many ways that you can distribute a survey. The easiest and fastest way to do so is to do it online. There are many platforms where you can customize and build different surveys for your tenants, and you can email it directly to the tenants. Then they get the email, click a few buttons, and the results and sent back to you that easily. As with most things, not everyone is privy to the latest technology and that is completely okay! A simple call to follow up after the service is a great way to show the tenant that you care about if their issues are resolved, and they don’t have to worry about getting confused with an online survey. Or you can also drop a paper survey off at their doorstep but the downside to this method is that they have to mail it back or deliver it back to the leasing office, which can be kind of inconvenient at the end of the day. The goal is to make it as easy and convenient as possible to get the best feedback from the tenants.

Constructive Criticism

Getting feedback is great but it’s what you do with the feedback that is going to improve your team and the community. It is important to sit down with your team and discuss the results of surveys and pick out a few things that can be improved. It’s important to remember to use these answers as a means of improvement rather than focusing on what went wrong. No one is perfect and as humans we make mistakes and it’s nearly impossible to make everyone happy.

There are many benefits to creating and distributing these tenant surveys because they provide an opportunity to hear from the tenants about their concerns. Remember that it is vital to create a healthy level of communication between tenants and the property management team to maintain a happy and satisfied property for your tenants!