Community Association Management Companies (CAMs) play an important role in managing administrative, accounting, financial, and maintenance tasks for the communities that have hired them. However, when servicing clients, CAMs face various challenges, such as resident dissatisfaction, overburdened managers, and dissatisfied boards. These issues often arise from a lack of forming and maintaining strong connections with their communities. That’s where a CRM comes in.
This blog post will look at the top challenges management companies face, how a CRM can address these challenges, and why implementing a CRM is vital. Thus, we will equip you with the correct tools and knowledge to improve resident happiness, board connections, and management efficiency.
Challenges that management companies are currently struggling with
Low Retention Rate
Community Association Management companies often struggle with low retention rates. This issue primarily manifests as most HOA communities leave their current management company within two years, opting to either self-manage their community or sign on with a competing management company.
This revolving door phenomenon forces CAM companies to seek new clients to replace the clients they have lost. This adds extra strain to management companies because they spend more time acquiring new sales. Moreover, high turnover in community management can undermine the trust and satisfaction of existing clients, who may perceive it as instability or lack of value in the services provided. Focusing your efforts on retention becomes vital through strong client relationships, proactive communication, and demonstrating value to ensure long-term satisfaction.
Eroding Resident Trust
Many management company interactions center around payment requests, invoicing, collections, and handling violations. Over time, the transactional nature of these relationships can make residents feel less valued, unheard, and unsatisfied. As trust erodes, residents may become more hesitant to participate in community activities, resulting in strained relationships and possible disputes.
Board Doubt and Oversight
Board members may often raise concerns about the value they’re getting from your management services. They want to be certain that services are efficient, jobs are completed on time, and communication is clear. Thus, a lack of proper management of community issues or communications can strain the board-management relationship.
Operational Inefficiencies
Community Association Management companies frequently face inefficiencies, such as manual processes, data in different places, and communication gaps. These inefficiencies can result in delays when responding to resident issues and inconsistent or poor service, all leading to increased workloads for managers. Additionally, operational efficiencies lead to more unpredictable schedules and stress for managers.
Limited Resident Engagement
Creating a sense of community and encouraging resident participation is important for a well-functioning community. However, management companies often struggle to keep residents informed. Limited communication channels and a lack of personalized interactions can all hinder building an engaged community.
Outdated Technology
Leveraging the latest technology is important for delivering exceptional customer service. However, several management companies are tethered to outdated systems. Being stuck in the past technologically can throw a wrench into your communication, data management, and operational efficiency. This ultimately diminishes the quality of services you provide to communities.
How CRM can help CAMs build better connections
By leveraging an industry-specific CRM, management companies can streamline operations, build resident trust, and improve board relationships. Let\’s discuss how CRM built specifically for the CAM industry can help your company.
1. Track resident interactions and provide support
With a CRM system, management companies can easily track resident interactions and provide efficient assistance. Here\’s a deeper look at how CRM may solve these key concerns:
Centralized Data Management
CRM enables management companies to keep all resident-related information in one unified platform. This includes residents’ contact information, communication choices, service requests, support requests, payment history, and unit information.
Centralizing data has many benefits. It enables your staff to access up-to-date resident information, reducing response times and increasing overall efficiency. It also improves data quality and consistency, decreasing mistakes and redundancies in resident records. Furthermore, having a centralized database allows team members to collaborate more effectively since everyone can access the same data source.
On-Demand Support through a Knowledge Base
One significant benefit of adopting a CRM system built for the community management industry is the ability to provide on-demand help through a searchable knowledge base. A knowledge base stores important community information, such as frequently asked questions, troubleshooting tips, and community policies and procedures.
Residents have 24/7 access to the knowledge base, allowing them to solve common problems at their own convenience. This eliminates the need for support teams to handle common questions, allowing them to focus on more meaningful or urgent tasks. A well-maintained knowledge base also improves resident satisfaction by delivering prompt and correct answers to their questions, resulting in a more efficient and streamlined support experience.
Efficient Handling of Support Tickets
CRM systems help management companies handle support issues more efficiently. When a resident submits a question or request, the CRM simplifies the process by enabling them to contact the right managers quickly.
With a CRM, you can keep residents informed about the progress of their requests, and they can communicate back with you, which creates a two-way feedback loop. This approach streamlines support processes by maintaining regular updates and keeping residents informed throughout the resolution process.
2. Communicate with residents
Effective communication lies at the heart of successful HOA management. A CRM system can revolutionize how HOA managers interact with residents, fostering efficient and personalized communication.
Proactive, Multichannel Communication
CRM solutions built for the community management industry enables you to engage with residents proactively through many channels. These channels include phone calls, emails, text messages, postal mail, website notifications, and resident portals. This proactive strategy ensures that residents receive updates, announcements, and notifications in the format that best meets their needs. Moreover, by embracing multichannel communication capabilities, management companies can improve the efficacy of their outreach initiatives, increase resident participation, and establish better community relationships.
Tailored Messages with Dynamic Distribution Group
CRM systems with communication capabilities provide dynamic distribution group functions, allowing management companies to segment residents according to locations. This segmentation allows management companies to provide relevant and targeted communications to certain groups of residents. For example, management companies can form distribution groups for homeowners, renters, and board members in a specific area for emergencies. Dynamic distribution groups help to enhance engagement, responsiveness, and resident happiness by personalizing communications to the interests and needs of each demographic.
3. Increase transparency and collaboration
Management companies must update board members regularly on the status of community tasks and projects. Here’s how a CRM improves transparency and communication with your board.
Collaborative Task Management
A task management system within your CRM allows management companies to collaborate with board members on community-related tasks. Each task can be categorized, prioritized, and assigned to a particular team or board member to ensure everyone knows their responsibilities.
Email Notifications and Updates
Task management features within a CRM can automate email alerts to board members for task assignments, changes, and updates. This proactive communication keeps board members informed and engaged with community initiatives, projects, and ongoing duties. Email notifications also function as reminders to take action and follow up.
Document Management and Sharing
Within a CRM, document management tools can help management companies store, organize, and exchange key documents, including contracts, rules, meeting minutes, and reports, with the HOA board. Authorized board members may securely view these documents, guaranteeing transparency and quick access to critical information. Additionally, document versioning and permission management improve security and governance.
Reporting and Analytics
CRM systems have extensive reporting and analytics capabilities that provide information on task progress, completion rates, resource allocation, and overall performance. Management companies can generate reports and view information on dashboards to share with the HOA board, highlighting critical data, trends, and successes. These reports provide transparency by offering information about operational efficiency, resident satisfaction, and community initiatives.
5 Features Your CRM should have
Here are the 5 features your CRM should have:
1. Communication
CRM systems should have powerful communication capabilities. Communication is vital for building connections, resolving issues quickly, and keeping stakeholders informed. CRM\’s communication component offers seamless engagement with residents and board members through several channels like email, phone, text, and portals.
With Pilera’s communication technologies, CAM benefits from seamless contact with homeowners, stakeholders, and the HOA board through many channels. This enables people to select their preferred communication channel, ensuring that timely and relevant communications reach them.
2. Customer Support
CRM systems should enable customer support teams to effectively respond to resident queries, complaints, and service requests. A CRM system with extensive customer support capabilities automates ticket administration, tracks support interactions, and guarantees that issues are resolved on time.
Pilera’s help desk function simplifies customer service for management teams. It enables managers to provide superior customer assistance by leveraging automated processes and knowledge base, increasing resident satisfaction.
3. Operations
A CRM system with strong operations management capabilities simplifies work assignment, scheduling, and tracking. It allows management companies to handle maintenance requests and track repair progress quickly.
Pilera’s operations management tool helps Community Association Management (CAM) improve task management, maintenance, ACRs, violations, and more. It also empowers collaboration with tools such as ticket assignment, automatic email notifications, and automatic audit logs.
4. Resident Engagement
Engaging residents is critical to creating a lively community and encouraging involvement in events, projects, and decision-making processes. Your HOA CRM should incorporate resident engagement features like community portals, event management, and surveys.
Pilera’s resident engagement portal offers residents a unified platform for accessing community information, participating in debates, and learning about future activities.
5. Board Collaboration
A powerful CRM should have comprehensive board collaboration tools to promote effective governance and decision-making. It allows CAM businesses to create, allocate, and monitor jobs, handle architectural modification requests, and provide reports demonstrating workload and work completion progress.
With Pilera’s board collaboration tools, CAM companies can enhance transparency, improve collaboration, and streamline operations, leading to better governance, informed decision-making, and a more cohesive community environment.
From Transactions to People-First, with CRM designed for CAMs
In conclusion, a CRM system is critical for Community Association Management organizations to manage challenges. An HOA CRM system streamlines communication, provides efficient customer assistance, optimizes operations, increases resident participation, and allows for smooth board cooperation. These capabilities enable CAM businesses to strengthen resident connections, increase transparency and confidence with HOA boards, streamline operational procedures, and provide superior services to their communities. CAM businesses can overcome barriers, increase efficiency, and achieve long-term success by utilizing a CRM system like Pilera while maintaining a flourishing and connected community.
About Pilera
Pilera Software is the premier community and property management software that has helped thousands of community managers enhance communications, operations, client support, engagement, and voting. Book a personalized demo to learn how Pilera can help improve efficiency and reduce costs.
