community management

2021 was a challenging year as managers worked tirelessly on customer retention and safe reopening of offices and community amenities.  As we approach 2022, now is a great time for your HOA management company to set clear goals for the upcoming year.  In this article, we’ll share 4 important goals to help your management company start off the year right.  We also provide some insights on how technology can help achieve your goals.

1) Continue focusing on customer service improvements

The global pandemic has shifted focus back on customer service and how important it is to the success of any business.  Customer service is tied to every aspect of your business from client retention to company growth.  

Did you know that retaining a loyal HOA client is 5 times less expensive than acquiring a new one?  Each client you retain allows you to allocate monetary resources to uplift other aspects of your business that you would have otherwise had to forgo if that client left. The better service you offer to your customers, the more likely they are to renew their contracts which increases your financial bottom line. The ability to deliver strong customer service can also be a differentiator for your company and help you gain new clients.

Now that you understand the critical role that customer service plays in your community management company, how do you prioritize this goal in 2022?   

Being responsive

During the past two years, customer service operations have faced many challenges. Many companies have found it challenging to keep up with the high volume of requests as employees continue working from home or have a hybrid schedule. Customers have also reported longer wait times or having to contact customer support multiple times for the same issue.  Communicating internally with employees and providing an easy way for residents to contact you can help achieve better results. Here\’s what you can do to improve your customer service today:

• Provide a way for residents to get in touch with you and make sure they know what that outlet is, whether it is email, social media, or a resident portal.
• Set expectations on when your team will handle incoming customer requests, whether it is one or two business days.
• Communicate internally with your staff and divide each employee\’s workload adequately. Use customer support software to manage resident requests from start to finish. Assign requests to staff members as they come in so nothing falls through the cracks. Through Pilera\’s resident support management feature, managers can automatically send e-notifications to residents with updates. Each action taken on a customer support ticket is tracked so managers can see what was done.
  

Promote self-service so your customer service is “always-on”

Residents expect to receive instant information about their community as well as “always-on” support.  However, when managers can’t always be there 24×7, a resident portal can serve as the community’s 24×7 information desk.  When updated regularly, a resident portal can be a powerful tool to promote self-service within the community.  Residents can look up their balances and make payments, view documents, learn about upcoming events, contact management, and more.  A portal offers them the convenience of accessing community information on any device or location without needing to call the management office.    

Regularly communicate with your residents

Communication is key for any customer service strategy to succeed.  When frequent and timely, communicating can help establish trust and transparency with your community members.  Things you should communicate with them about include safety issues or emergencies, maintenance, amenity policies, meetings, events, or other issues impacting the community.

2) Increase employee efficiency

Employee efficiency is key to every aspect of your business – employee retention, operations, customer service, and increasing revenue.  When employees are productive as a team, it improves the work environment, leading to less churn.  Many companies nationwide, including community management companies, are experiencing a rise in employee churn.  This puts a lot of strain on current employees as they scramble to take on the tasks of those who left.  This can result in employees becoming overwhelmed. Churn also strains the company\’s financial resources because hiring and onboarding a new employee costs much more than retaining an existing one.

But that\’s not all. Happier employees means happier customers. One of the most important reasons to invest in employee efficiency is that there\’s a direct correlation between increased employee productivity and customer satisfaction. Employees who find value and meaning in their work are more likely to stay and increase their productivity, and this results in more satisfied customers.

Now that you understand the impact of employee efficiency on your business, how can you achieve this goal in 2022? The key is to give your employees the processes and tools to help them work smarter, not harder.

Improve internal communications

According to Firstup, 86% of corporate employees state that poor internal communication leads to failures in the workplace.  It\’s important to regularly communicate with your employees, whether it be through virtual meetings, chat, or email. Check in with your community managers and staff regularly on tasks they’re working on, have completed, and any issues they need help to resolve.  Encourage two-way communication so that your employees are comfortable sharing their concerns and solutions.

Encourage your employees to get accredited

Industry certifications empower managers to be better equipped in handling various responsibilities for the communities they manage. When managers have the tools and resources to do their job, they’ll be more efficient and knowledgeable.  Consider encouraging your employees to partake in Community Association Institute (CAI)’s CMCA, AMS, and PCAM courses for the community association industry.

Susan Hoffman, Managing Director of Professional Association Services, Inc. in California, says that education is one of her company\’s most important goals.  “We’re pursuing that through Community Association Institute and the minimum certification is the CMCA and about half of our managers are credentialed that way.  We have a couple of people that have other credentials from other organizations.  But we’re on a trajectory to get everybody certified and credentialed so that we have a lot more depth and experience.  I’m a big proponent of education in the industry.  I was a facilitator for the CAI for a number of years and it’s very important to me that managers are educated and they at least understand the framework and they know where to go or what resources to get when they need help with something.”

The right technology can help employees get work done smarter

Technology has become core to a company’s operations.  However, employees may feel overwhelmed with the vast amounts of information and technology they are expected to deal with.  In fact, RingCentral\’s report states that 69% of employees lose 32 days a year toggling between multiple apps. Imagine having to log into separate applications to keep track of your tasks, communicate with your residents, upload community documents, work on maintenance requests, issue violations, or approve architectural requests.  Thankfully, there are software solutions available that bring a community manager’s most vital tasks together.

Community management software such as Pilera’s enables your organization to streamline important tasks like communications, maintenance, customer service, online payments, and resident engagement.  Multiple people in your organization can log into one platform and get visibility into each other’s tasks.  This allows your staff to work together and smarter without constantly needing to ask for updates.  For example, these key features in Pilera help increase employee efficiency:

• Automated email notifications when tickets are created and assigned keep the right people informed.
• Analytics reports give insights into which communities are creating the most amount of work, or which employees are overwhelmed.
• Dashboards show managers at a glance the tickets that are assigned to them by prioritiy, urgency, or age, so they can plan out their day accordingly.    

3) Increase Revenue Streams

As many management companies focused on safe reopening and client retention in 2021, revenue goals remained on the backburner.  In 2022, consider how you can take incremental steps toward the revenue goals you want to pursue.  

When you increase revenue, you can improve profitability.  Focusing on revenue growth enables your management company to gain more clients, grow your internal team, and offer better service.  

You can combine one or more of the following growth strategies with your current offerings to improve profitability and reduce risk to your company.  

Offer new services

One way to position your company for growth is to offer new complementary services to your existing clients for an additional cost.  A great example is building an in-house maintenance team to offer home maintenance and improvement services to your residents.  

Offer your existing services to an untapped market

A study by Bain & Company showed that businesses that moved into an adjacent market saw the most profitable growth.  For example, if your company exclusively services single-family homes, you may consider aligning your services to condominiums, high-rise or luxury condos, or even apartments.      

Expand geographically

Many management companies operate within a specific city or multiple neighboring cities.  One way to improve your company’s growth is to expand into an adjacent regional location.  As you come up with your expansion plans, it’s important to evaluate the following:

1. Existing regulations that your company will need to comply with in the region you\’re interested in entering. 
2. How similar or different are the needs of communities in this new potenial city/state as compared to where you are currently operating?
3. How easily can you adapt your business model to meet potential clients’ needs or succeed in the business environment?
4. Existing competitor offerings – What can you offer that’s unique and isn’t offered by local competitors?  
5. Business relationships that you can create in the area to solidify your offerings such as availability of high quality contractors.

Whichever growth strategy you opt for, community management technology can help you scale.  Pilera’s community management feature is an enterprise solution that makes it simple for managers to handle any type of community in their portfolio.  Features such as unlimited staff users, cross-community search and dashboards, reports, and user roles all help to organize work, increase efficiency, and improve security as you grow your portfolio.  

4) Reduce Costs

Driving costs down is crucial to improving your company’s growth.  However, the challenge is to not compromise your company’s core values or the quality of the customer service you provide.  Here are two major ways you can reduce costs:

Invest in community management software

Using the right software can help save money while automating many mundane tasks for your business.  Pilera’s community management software helps you centralize vital community tasks such as communications, maintenance, customer service, document management, payment processing, event management, and much more in one place.  Community management software reduces costs in many ways, here are just a few of them:

A) Reduce paper mailings

Automating phone, email, and text messages to notify residents can save thousands of dollars per year in paper mailings.  Even sending electronic notices for maintenance, rule violations, ACRs, events, and documents through Pilera pay for itself. 

B) Eliminate paperwork

Previously, managers would keep track of work orders, tasks, and resident data through handwritten notes.  Switching to a community management platform like Pilera helps you declutter your office space and track tasks more easily.

C) Reduce hidden expenses

When you reduce time, you save money!  A hidden expense such as an hour-long phone call with a resident that could have been resolved through a self-help portal is one such expense that many companies overlook.  Technology can offload many tasks like communicating to your entire portfolio, notifying vendors, or providing a 24×7 help desk to residents. 

Help your communities to reduce cost

In addition to helping your communities manage operations, it\’s also important to help them save money. When you help your clients save money, you can save money too.  Here are some ways to help your communities reduce costs:

A) Budget planning and monitoring

By this time, your communities will have already prepared their budgets for the upcoming year.  However, it’s important to have a working budget the community can use to monitor income and expenses in real-time. 

B) Preventative maintenance

Preventative maintenance is the action of regularly monitoring the condition of your community’s equipment and identifying issues early before it escalates into an emergency situation.  While it reduces equipment replacement costs for your communities, it saves your staff time from unexpectedly having to go on-site to assess the situation.  Many Pilera clients handle preventative maintenance by creating work orders, setting a due date and priority, and then assigning them to vendors or staff.

C) Reserves study

It’s vital that HOA’s conduct a reserves study to identify all the equipment in their communities and when they need to be repaired or completely replaced.  This study helps the Board to identify how well prepared they are financially to take care of these repairs or replacements. 

Summary of HOA management goals you should focus on in 2022

Set goals early for 2022 so that your management company can take action toward those goals and monitor them regularly. To take your company forward, focus on these four important goals:

1. Improve customer service – Ingrain customer service in every part of your business. Respond to residents in a timely manner, promote self-service within the community, and communicate regularly with them. With the right technology, you can provide residents with a 24×7 information desk and make it easier for them to contact you with questions.
   
2. Increase employee efficiency – Create processes and give your employees the tools to help them work smarter and be more productive. Improve internal communications with regular check ins to make sure your employees feel valued and get the assistance they need. Encourage employees to get accredited in community management so they can solve everyday challenges more easily. Finally, provide employees with a tool that centalizes all of their important tasks. Community management software platforms consolidate all important tasks in one place.
   
3. Increase revenue – To generate additional income, consider providing new complementary services to your existing clientele, serving a new market, or expanding to a new geographic location. Community management software such as Pilera\’s helps you scale no matter which avenue you choose.
   
4. Reduce costs – Manage your costs more effectively without compromising on quality is something that many businesses struggle with. Start by helping your clients save money and investing in community management software to automate everyday tasks.

Streamlining maintenance is one of the most critical activities in community management.  Managers aim to increase the public appeal of the community and ensure the safety of its staff and residents.  The right technology can help managers not only achieve but optimize those goals. As you research HOA maintenance software options for your community, ask vendors these 5 questions.

1. Can residents submit maintenance requests?

Providing residents with a way to self-service and be notified about important things relating to their unit and the community increases engagement and builds trust.  When a resident identifies a maintenance issue in their unit or within an area that lies within the HOA or condo’s responsibility to fulfill, they need a way to inform management of it.  

[icon name=”check-square” class=”” unprefixed_class=””] Can your residents…

• Submit work order tickets about their unit or common areas
• Add pertinent details about the issue
• Select access preference – Does the resident want to be at the property when the maintenance personnel arrives?
• Receive updates on when the issue was resolved
• View a history of all the tickets they have submitted & the status of each.

2. Can you manage maintenance tickets from start to finish?

A robust work order management system should not only provide managers with the ability to create tickets but to streamline them from start to end.  Managers should be able to triage tickets when they come in or are created, know the status of each ticket, and collaborate with staff members.

[icon name=”check-square” class=”” unprefixed_class=””] Can your staff…

• Create unit level or common area tickets
• Add pertinent details and attachments
• Categorize and prioritize the ticket
• Assign a ticket to another manager, staff member, vendor, or yourself
• Automatically notify the assignee of the new ticket
• Change status or comment on the ticket.

3. Can you gain high-level insights on maintenance operations?

Community managers need access to high-level and granular data to understand their operations and make better-informed decisions.  Through the HOA maintenance software, managers should be able to easily identify the number of tickets open/closed per month, their staff’s workload, the tickets that have not been worked on for a long time, and how many tickets each vendor is working on.  Managers should be able to easily capture this information for a specific community or across their entire portfolio. In Pilera’s maintenance system, managers receive an automated report with all the tickets that haven’t been touched for 30 days. This insight is essential for managers to handle the workload of their staff and vendors, prioritize work, and ensure that nothing falls off their radar.

4. Can you search for resident data quickly?

When a resident calls, emails, or walks into the management office to report a maintenance issue for their unit, you need to quickly search through your resident listing to create the ticket.  An HOA maintenance software should have a robust search capability. Searching by partial names or addresses, a resident’s unit, email, or phone number will save managers and staff members time if they are managing hundreds of tickets.

5. Can you maintain a vendor database effectively?

Building good relations with your vendors is crucial to the upkeep of your community or apartment complex.  As a manager, you need to know which vendors are approved to work for certain communities, the services they can provide, when their COIs are expiring, how you’ve rated their services, and how to keep in touch with them for new projects.  

[icon name=”check-square” class=”” unprefixed_class=””] Can managers…

• Track contact information, addresses, and maintenance personnel information
• Assign vendors to categories such as entry management, landscaping, plumbing, and more
• Automatically notify vendors of the new maintenance tickets assigned to them
• Assign vendors to work for multiple communities at once
• Rate vendors so you know who your preferred contractors are

Using the right technology when it comes to managing maintenance projects can make all the difference in contributing to communities that are well-run, safe, happy, and look good.  It\’s essential to ask these five major questions when researching maintenance software options so that you can give your staff the best tools.

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories?  Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company. 

The client service team is at the heart of your HOA or Condo management company’s operations.  They are busy at work carrying out the many responsibilities designated to them by community associations and delivering the promised services to help run communities well.  For the client services team’s efforts to be cohesive, they need to be given the motivation, resources, and outlets they need to succeed. Since the community management industry is heavily centered on community building, nurturing your client service team needs to have a “people-first” approach too.  In this blog post, we emphasize on four ways to power your client services team using this approach.

1) Communicate your expectations

It is critical to set the company’s expectations with the internal team to maintain consistency in the services you’re providing.  Communicating expectations helps your team to become more focused and lessen frustration. Here are some ways in which you can set expectations internally:

• Educate employees about the HOA or condo management company’s mission, values, goals, and any new or existing procedures.
• Define goals for the team individually and collectively.
• Engage your client services team in tasks and projects that contribute to “bigger picture” goals.  These goals may include happier boards and residents, saving time internally, and increasing profit.
• Communicate regularly with employees to reduce confusion.
• Meet with your team at least once a month to keep them abreast of anything new.  
• When you introduce new processes or fundamental changes, provide adequate training to employees. 

2) Motivate your employees

Studies have constantly shown that motivation is key to your employee’s productivity, achievements, and enjoyment of the job duties they are performing.  Harvard Business Review emphasizes that to motivate employees, a company must excel in 3 main behaviors: inspiration, kindness, and self-care. These three behaviors couldn’t be more vital in a management company’s fast-paced environment.

Inspire your client services team by giving meaning to the role they play in enriching the resident experience. Next, show kindness in the workplace. Showing consideration, empathy, and respect is essential to building a good rapport with and among team members.  Self-care is about ensuring that you take care of your client service personnel while they’re in your employment. Ways community managers/directors can engage in self-care for their employees by actively seeking their input, assisting them in the personal development of different job skills, and helping them to achieve a good work/life balance.  Make sure to have enough client service personnel to designate a different on-call person each weekend and circulate that responsibility among the team.

3) Manage knowledge internally

With knowledge abounding in every management company, there are so many benefits in effectively managing that wealth of information.  A knowledge management system such as an FAQ section serves as a great tool to train employees and board members, keep knowledge within the company or community as an employee or board member leaves and can be referred to during any resident interaction to keep oneself knowledgeable.  Additionally, it\’s a powerful way to keep track of different kinds of information throughout all of the communities your staff works with every day (because every community is different and unique!) ranging from community contact information to maintenance responsibility charts to guest and pet policies.  

A FAQs section when built to answer commonly asked questions by internal staff, boards, and residents and nurtured over time as the company or community evolves increases staff productivity and client satisfaction.  Take a look at our blog article for more guidance on the questions you can answer in your FAQs section.  

4) Actively seek suggestions from your client services team

We briefly mentioned that actively seeking input from your client services team can boost employee creativity.  Furthermore, it gives more meaning to the work they perform.  The influx of fresh ideas you can gain from your team helps to stay relevant in a competitive market and improve the quality of service you deliver to your clients.  Additionally, set expectations for the input you seek from employees. Inform your employees of how the feedback collection process will work.  Then, give your team a platform to share their concerns and suggestions for improvement. Such platforms may include group brainstorming or one-on-one meetings, surveys, or your annual review with the employee.  

When your client service staff provides valuable input, make it a point to recognize the quality of their idea. Furthermore, if you have implemented an employee\’s idea, let them know about the positive impact it will have. 

Empowering Your Team

An HOA or condo management company leader can better position themselves to empower client service team members when they set expectations accordingly and communicate it with the team, inspire them, nurture knowledge throughout the company, and actively seek suggestions from the team.  Therefore, management can deliver services that not only meets but exceeds the client\’s expectations.  Internally, the manager\’s and client service team\’s goals will be better aligned to help their clients achieve exceptionally managed communities.

Greetings,

This month\’s enhancements to our community and property management solution focus on communications where we\’ve added a new option for residents to receive messages and work order response templates to give on-creation insight into which communities your templates have been applied to.  Without further ado, let\’s explore these new updates!

Enhancements

• Communications
  • Residents can now choose to be notified via physical mailing by selecting it as their communication preference.  Important note: Selecting this preference does not send out the physical mail through Pilera, but indicates to managers that the resident wants to receive their communications through snail mail/physical mail.
  • The Resident Report now indicates which residents have chosen physical mailing as their communication preference.
  • The “Reschedule Message” function in the Message Center now loads a calendar for managers to select the date and time.
  • For better clarity, we\’ve changed one of the email delivery statuses from “open” to “opened”.
• Work Orders/Templates
  • After our introduction of Templates on August 28, 2018 release, we’ve improved the user interface to better inform managers on how many communities are linked to a template.  Similarly, if there are no communities linked to a template, we indicate that in two areas:
    
    • (1) An indicator next to the “Communities” tab.
    • (2) The green “Save Without Linking Communities” submission button.
  • We’ve added a “Manage” link next to “Quick Add Comment” for Work Order comments so that managers can be directed to the template administration page in a new browser window.
    
  • Tickets now support the entry of emoji’s when creating and updating a ticket.
• Miscellaneous Update
  • We have added indicators (red astrice mark) to the following fields required when adding a lease to a unit: lease number, and start and end date so that managers know what fields need to be entered for successful submission.

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is a premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers, board members, and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, streamline maintenance, and increase resident satisfaction.  May we help your community achieve these success stories? Schedule a demo today to see our software live in action or request a quote!

Greetings everyone,

This month, we have a few enhancements to our community and property management software to share with you.  These updates are enhancements to work orders, the occupant ticket permissions that we released last month, and the new document library.

Enhancements

• Work orders 
  • The work order ticket details now display a vendor tooltip for quick access to information about the vendor assigned to the ticket.  Managers can also click “View in Vendor App” to be redirected to the vendor’s record to edit or view more information.
    
    
  • Formatting in the Unit Work Order PDF print sheet has been improved.
• Tickets
  • In the ticket emails that managers receive upon the creation of a work order or unit activity log, the assignee name and the occupant permission fields will be displayed.  In September 2018, we released a new feature within our ticketing system that gives managers more control over resident access to viewing, editing, or commenting at a ticket-level.
  • Each detailed ticket report (insurance, unit and common area work orders, unit and occupant activity logs, and rule violations) now includes the occupant ticket permissions that were set.  Sample of an insurance report:
    
  • When creating a new ticket, the app provides a more clear error message if a user’s email address is invalid or if the user does not have “email address” selected as their communication preference.
• New Document Library
  • Minor changes have been made to the new document library’s file uploading and downloading for better usability.  When adding a new file to the document library, the display name will be the exact same as the file name given prior to uploading.  Managers can then change the name of the file if they wish. Similarly, when downloading a file from the document library, the download name is exactly the same as the file name and does not include a unique identifier string at the end. An example of before and after:
    • Before: meetingminutes_9489jdksa0933k.pdf
    • Now: Meetingminutes.pdf
  • Previously, we would scale down images. Now, they are uploaded as the original file.

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About Pilera:

Pilera Software is a premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers, board members, and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, streamline maintenance, and increase resident satisfaction.  May we help your community achieve these success stories? Schedule a demo today to see our software live in action or request a quote!

Greetings everyone,

We are back with an update on what is new in Pilera’s community and property management software this month.  We’ve released a few new enhancements in tickets, work orders, and communications. These new updates will give you better control on the visibility of your tickets and provide residents with more options for language translation.  

Enhancements:

• Advanced Ticket Permissions for Occupants
  • Within the tickets in Pilera, managers now have the option to control ticket visibility and editability for occupants/residents.  The ticket types include the unit-area work orders, common-area work orders, and insurance tickets.
  • The visibility and editability options we’ve implemented are as follows:
    • Hide – The ticket is not viewable to occupants.
    • View – The ticket can be viewed by relevant occupants in the resident portal.
    • Comment – This would allow occupants in the unit to add comments to the ticket.
    • Edit & Comment – This would give occupants full access to modify the ticket.  Note: It’s important to be cautious about giving full edit capabilities to residents.  Make sure that you are okay with residents being able to modify the ticket and that you are aware of exactly who can edit it with the permission.  Be sure to review each individual ticket permissions to learn who can perform what actions.
      
      
  • We also have some tickets that do not have the infrastructure in place yet such as activity logs (unit and occupant) and rule violations.  However, in the future, we plan on opening them to residents too. You can begin setting the permissions now but they will not go into effect until a later release; therefore, we highly recommend exercising caution in setting those permissions.
• Work Orders
  • For improved clarity and usability, we’ve added help tips for the Notify Contact Via Email selector in the work order ticket based on the option a manager chooses in the Comment Visibility selector.
    • If managers set Comment Visibility to “Managers & Residents See”, the option to Notify Contact Via Email will be enabled/permitted.
      
      
    • For example, if managers set Comment Visibility to “Managers Only See”, the Notify Contact via Email will be greyed out by default and will display accompanying text.
      
      
• Vendor Management
  • The vendor name now displays in the Work Order Ticket Print Sheet.
    
• New Document Library
  • The file details in the new document library now displays the file type and size for all users.  
  • We have improved the message in the new document library when a file exceeds the 20MB limit or if an unsupported file type has been added, for better clarity.
    
• Communications
  • In the Send Document functionality, we’ve expanded the list of file types that can be sent through email: doc, docx, gif, jpeg, jpg, png, pdf, ppt, pptx, xls, xlsx.
  • We now support the translation of text messages and emails in 13 new languages in our communications platform, totaling 103 languages!
     
    • Armenian
    • Amharic
    • Frisian
    • Xhosa
    • Hawaiian
    • Kyrgyz
    • Luxembourgish
    • Nyanja (Chichewa)
    • Pashto
    • Samoan
    • Scots Gaelic
    • Shona
    • Sindhi
      
• Integration Updates
  • Caliber
    • Pilera now integrates with CalPay for our Caliber clients.  CalPay is a new method for residents to make their dues payment.  Upon clicking the “Make a Payment” button in Pilera, a new tab will open directing the resident to CalPay.  If you are using Caliber for your accounting system and would like to enable this feature, please contact us at [email protected].
    • We now import another user type called “other-occupants” from Caliber, whereas previously we only imported owners and tenants.
• Resident Portal
  • Terms of Use
    • We have updated our terms of use and privacy policy.  Users will now be required to accept the terms as they are logging in.  By accepting the terms of use, users accept all policies as stated in the agreement.
• Miscellaneous 
  • We’ve also improved user permissions performance which will help with our future planned functionalities and provide greater flexibility in permission settings for our clients.

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About Pilera:

Pilera Software is a premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers, board members, and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, streamline maintenance, and increase resident satisfaction.  May we help your community achieve these success stories? Schedule a demo today to see our software live in action or request a quote!

Last month, you learned how to manage your community’s data effectively and send a welcome message to new residents in Pilera.  Specifically, you performed a quality assurance check of your data. You’ve looked at the invalid emails and text numbers report (automatically sent to your inbox). [icon name=”check” class=”” unprefixed_class=””] Also, you’ve given the power to residents to update their information. [icon name=”check” class=”” unprefixed_class=””]

In the second part, we discuss different communication options in Pilera to help you send the right message at the right time.  Follow along!

Types of Outreach

• Announce something important to your community – When you need to send an important message to your community, you can use the Send Announcement feature in Pilera.  This can be sent in the form of an email, text, or a phone call.  It’s completely up to you and the resident. If there is an incident occurring in the community and you need to inform your residents quickly of the situation, you can type the message and turn on Emergency Phone Call.  The residents will receive a phone call through the number set as their primary contact and an email.
• Send files to your community – When you need to send relevant or time-sensitive documents to your community, you can use the Send Document feature in Pilera.  Residents will receive the document if they specified email address their communication preference. There are many types of files you can attach to the email.  You can also send multiple in the same email too.
• Let residents know of an upcoming event – You can use the Event feature in Pilera to notify residents of any upcoming events in the community.  Residents will receive an email if they have specified one as their communication preference.

Be in control of who gets your messages & when

Whether you are sending an announcement, an urgent message, files, or event notifications, you should be in full control of who gets the message and when they get it.  You can send communications to a particular street, building, floor, unit, or to groups of people. The latter can be sent through the Send Message feature. Through the schedule announcements feature, you can schedule a message 2 weeks in advance.  This is especially helpful if a staff member is going on vacation.  They can send important messages to the HOA or condo community members even when not in the office.

Video: How to Improve Communications with Pilera

What else can you communicate to residents?  

• Update residents on the status of a work order they submitted to management.  You can let them know what is going on throughout the maintenance request, not just when the request is complete.
• If a resident violated an association rule, you can choose to have residents be notified through their preferred communication method.       

We hope you enjoyed going through these quick tips on how to use Pilera for your condo or HOA communities and thank you for your time.  We’ll be back soon to give you some more insight on communications. Stay tuned!

Have you been reviewing the communications sent to your residents in the past few months and found that they aren’t opening emails?  Or perhaps, they aren’t reading text messages about ground maintenance and are unpleasantly surprised by the noise?  A resident might not be engaged in the community for several reasons.  Let\’s take a look at three residents – Jacob, Sally, and Sandy – and understand those reasons.

Jacob

Jacob works full-time during the day as a manager of a local coffee and bakery shop.  He\’s also a very busy dad, dropping the kids off to swimming practice in the evenings and cheering them on during competitions.  Thus, after a long day\’s work, heavy traffic on the way home, and picking up the kids from practice, Jacob missed seeing an email from the managers.

Sally

Sally recently moved into a three-bedroom condo after living in an apartment for four years.  This is the first time that she is a part of a condo association.  Therefore, the experience is very new to her and she doesn\’t know how to receive community updates.

Sandy

Sandy has been living in the community for two years now but hasn\’t shown an interest in community ongoings recently.  She finds it too difficult to know what is going on in the community or what association rules she has to abide by.

How can you compete against time crunches, lack of understanding, and apathy to effectively reach your community?

1) Focus on transparent communications

Any communication your team sends should focus on improving the transparency of your operations.  This is one step that goes a long way toward building resident engagement.  Residents with less time will want to find a way to be involved and the company can gain the trust of previously uninterested residents.

2) Use direct mailers or flyers to make the initial intro

Direct mailers and flyers are a great way to make the initial introduction to residents who aren\’t engaged. Although direct mailers can be costly depending on the volume, this avenue could be money well spent if it increases resident engagement and reduces problems.  For example, you opted to send a direct mailer to the entire community on the recently launched resident web portal. Let\’s see how each resident reacted:

• Jacob is happy to be knowledgeable of when maintenance will arrive to fix the water pipes on his property so he can be present.
• Sally is now more at ease because she can learn about the community she lives in.  Specifically, she will learn how to pay her dues online and understand the association rules.
• Sandy can now receive updates on community ongoings, events, and how her contribution is valuable. Being proactive and taking small incremental steps can make a big difference in building the foundation for trust.

Being proactive and taking small incremental steps can make a big difference in building the foundation for trust.

3) Use multi-channel online communications

Make it easy for your residents to get information quickly by using multi-channel communications.  If you stick to just sending out emails, you risk reaching out to those who do not have an email or aren\’t tech-savvy.  There is a popular saying in marketing – “Be where the customer is”. Similarly, the best policy for managers to reach disengaged residents is to be active on the communication channels they use. Those channels might be a website, social media, email, phone calls, or text messages.

4) Keep the message short and to the point

People tend to have less attention span when they multi-task.  Long messages lose focus and will further disengage residents who already aren’t engaged.  Additionally, messages to residents should be short and concise. The language should be easy enough to understand and the resident should know why they are receiving the message.

5) Encourage resident engagement through events & scheduled meetings

The best way to spur some activity from busy, apathetic, or uninformed residents is to be proactive yourself as a community manager.  Encourage residents to attend the board meetings and explain why it is important to be involved and give their inputs. Host fun social events for the community to not only serve as an ice-breaker but get them more involved and knowledgeable. Additionally, you can schedule a one-on-one meeting or phone call with the resident to get down to the crux of their concerns and come to a resolution.  The resident will appreciate that their property/community manager is taking time out for them and that their voice matters to the community.  They will truly feel that they are part of a community that takes their best interests to heart.

Facing Low Engagement/Responsiveness Challenges

One of the most prevalent challenges a community or property manager faces is reaching unresponsive or disengaged residents.  Low attention spans, disinterest, or lack of an understanding of how a community works can be obstacles to reaching residents.  However, being proactive and setting your company or community for transparent operations can help make the transition from a dis-coordinated community to a more engaged one, easier.

 

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories?  Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company.  

Communications, when done well, can help your HOA or condominium management company build resident trust and provide a valuable experience to residents.  In this blog post, we cover ten planning and organization tips to help you not only manage outreach to residents but EXCEL in it!  

1) Perform a frequent communications audit

On a regular basis, it\’s helpful to review outreach efforts for the communities you manage.  This evaluation will help gain insight on how effective those efforts are. The audit will prompt you to ask questions about:

• Methods used by managers to contact residents
• Percentage of residents reached through each method
• How residents have contacted the management office
• Which questions residents ask management regularly
• Whether staff responses satisfied residents
• The time it takes for a manager to respond to and resolve a resident\’s question, concern, or complaint

2) Develop a communications strategy

Based on the evaluation, work with your team to develop a communications strategy that comprises the following elements:

• Responsibility for communicating with residents – Designate roles to employees and make sure that responsibilities for everyone is clear.
• The content of your communications – Decide what information needs to be conveyed to residents?
• The frequency of communications – Specify the number of times a week, month, or on an as-needed basis.
• Method of communication – phone, email, text message, or website notice.
• How will you measure resident satisfaction with management responses and overall customer service?

 Read our blog post  to learn more about how to create a communications strategy for your community.  After the plan draft is complete, review it with your team, test the plan, and make any corrections to it.  

3) Keep residents contacts up to date

Low open rates and high bounce rates may overshadow your communications efforts.  When you review resident contacts in your database, you may find that some information is outdated. Therefore, you should reach out to residents whose emails or phone numbers are no longer in use and correct the information.  A better method is to have residents update their contact information in the database themselves.

4) Create a communications schedule

Once you and the team have developed a high-level communications strategy that aligns with business objectives, it’s time to drill into the specifics.  Create a schedule for what staff will convey, by whom, when, and through what methods. A schedule that contains content at least two to three weeks ahead of time helps you to stay on task.  You may opt to create a spreadsheet or a calendar. Here is what a sample communications schedule might look like:

5) Segment your communications

Residents require different information based on what is occurring in the community (and can impact them) and which area of the community they reside in.  That is why dividing residents into groups based on location is helpful and can guide your team in providing them with relevant information. This also improves the organization of your communications.

6) Create message templates

As you continue the outreach to residents, you might identify similar information managers send time and again.  Thus, a message that managers can re-use should be converted into a template. Templates help keep content consistent and save time.  Additionally, staff can also re-use the templates and edit the content if needed.

7) Schedule your messages ahead of time

Once you’ve built out the templates and created a communications schedule, start scheduling messages through your communications software in ahead of time. Scheduling messages beforehand has many advantages.  For example, staff can schedule messages in advance so that no outreach is forgotten during busy times.  Furthermore, a staff member can schedule a message days or weeks prior to a holiday. If your communications software permits, it’s best to schedule messages a couple of weeks ahead of time.

8 Incorporate your branding

The company’s brand should be prevalent in every outreach effort to maintain consistent messaging and professionalism.  To illustrate, the brand reflects the company’s voice (tone), values (what the company stands for), and design (look and feel). When creating an email or newsletter, add the company logo and incorporate the brand’s colors in text and background areas.  Additionally, developing a brand template with all requirements can help staff to keep their messaging aligned with company values.

9) Keep the content simple

To convey information to residents effectively, the message needs to be clear and easy to understand.  Use short headlines and keep the text short. Furthermore, staff should incorporate the 5 W’s and an H – who, what, when, where, why, and how into the message.  Also, if the information you need to put across requires sharing lengthy details, break it up into sections with short headlines.

10) Don\’t leave out interpersonal communications

One of the most important, more in-depth ways to convey information to your community members is through personal, face-to-face communications. This communication focuses on verbal (what is actually said) and non-verbal cues (tone, expressions, and body language) to express feelings or convey information.  Therefore, you can gain a better understanding of resident sentiment in face-to-face meetings to address problems before it escalates.

Community outreach is a vital part of daily operations – without it, poor communications can result in resident disengagement and lack of proper coordination internally.  However, when done right, outreach helps to improve transparency in and out of the organization and increases satisfaction for both residents and employees.

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About Pilera

Pilera Software is the premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories?  Book a demo to see how Pilera’s community management suite can help your company.  

Greetings,

This month we have added some enhancements to our current community and property management features that improve design, readability, and organization of information.

Enhancements:

• Work Orders
  • The Community Meeting Work Order PDF report now includes a location field detailing where maintenance has been requested.
    
• Automated Report Emails
  • Automated email formatting has been improved to provide better readability.
• Microsoft Excel Reports
  • We\’ve improved the naming conventions for several reports that managers can download in an MS Excel format which include common area work order, unit area work order, occupant call log, and unit call log reports.
• Jenark
  • Jenark work orders are now ordered chronologically by newest to oldest when displayed in Pilera.

About Pilera:

Pilera Software is a premier community and property management suite that has helped thousands of community managers, board members, and back-office personnel enhance communications, improve customer service, and manage compliance and operations.  May we help your community achieve these success stories? Contact us today for any questions about our software or these new updates or request a quote!