This month’s community engagement blog comes courtesy of our Customer Success Director, Andy Silvers, where he shares what we’ve learned in August and his top tips for driving engagement across your buildings and residents.
What we’ve learned in August
With the holiday season in full swing, we saw a 65% decrease in amenity and event bookings compared to July, with residents opting to make the most out of the warm weather and explore further afield. However, it was positive to see that app usage was up 200% since the beginning of the year, with forum posts remaining consistently high, underlining the role that resident apps like Spike Living are now playing in our daily lives. Furthermore, despite many people returning to their offices for the first time in well over a year, we saw a 50% increase in deliveries being processed through our platforms, showing how accustomed we’ve become to online shopping, with this trend set to continue.
Carrying on from last month, here are some more fun ways to boost engagement and encourage your residents to get to know their neighbours and your in-house team.
Pop up Food Stands
Bring the local community to your residents. We have clients who regularly invite local restaurants and cafes onsite to provide pop up food stands offering residents a mixture of cuisine to try. This is a great way to encourage your residents to get to know their local area, and local businesses may even offer a discount to those who live in the building on future bookings.
Book Club
An oldie but goodie. Even before the pandemic hit, some of our clients had thriving book clubs where residents regularly got together over food and drink to discuss their latest read. When the pandemic hit, these turned into virtual clubs, where meet ups were held over Zoom instead.
Running Club
If you have a communal gym, what better way to increase usage than by forming a running club. Or if your residents prefer to be outside, why not provide them with some suggested running routes where they can then compete for the fastest time, encouraging some friendly competition?
Film Club
If you have screening or cinema rooms onsite, then having a film club is the perfect way to encourage neighbours to bond over their love of films. Why not choose a ‘theme of the week’ and allow you9r residents to become their very own film critics by recommending their own films to watch? We have one of our clients have over 1,000 bookings for their screening rooms last month – showing that nothing can beat being at the movies!
Baking Club
With most people confined to their homes during the pandemic, we saw many residents turn their hands to baking, with a few even leaving their baked goodies in reception for others in their buildings to enjoy. Baking clubs provide the perfect opportunity for residents to share and discuss recipes, and with Bake Off returning to our screens this month, why not create your own mini ‘bake off’ with residents competing to be crowned star baker of the month?
Film Club
If you have screening or cinema rooms onsite, then having a film club is the perfect way to encourage neighbours to bond over their love of films. Why not choose a ‘theme of the week’ and allow your residents’ to become their very own film critics by recommending their own films to watch? We had one of our clients have over 1,000 bookings for their screening rooms last month – showing that nothing can beat being at the movies!
Have your own tips for driving resident engagement or decided to implement some of our suggestions above? Then get in touch, we would love to hear from you.
The use of environmental, social and governance (ESG) reporting is increasing. Achieving a point where a development has a positive ESG impact should be the goal of all investors and developers.
Why ESG?
Tenants are increasingly basing their rental and purchasing decisions on the potential environmental and social impact of their homes. It is therefore in the best interests of investors and developers to create schemes that meet these needs.
The World Bank makes the case that ‘Green’ buildings can:
Yield up to 23% higher occupancy rates
Provide 8% higher rental income
Create 31% higher sale premiums than traditional buildings
Other industries such as fashion, entertainment, technology, and leisure have demonstrated a clear connection between ESG and enhanced returns. Consumers, including shareholders, are demanding integrity – and changing their spending choices to get it. The property industry has the opportunity to do the same, embracing robust, genuine ESG investments.
Where to start?
People should be at the centre of everything you do, with the goal of providing great homes, creating healthier places to live, and boosting the social and economic worth of the surrounding neighbourhoods.
Spike Global provides software solutions that connect property managers with residents, as well as creating a closer link to the wider local community. Here are some of the ways our clients are benefiting.
Engagement
Our resident portal, Spike Living, allows developers to promote best practices and provide key building information such as where to find the nearest recycling point, fire safety policies and procedures, as well as ways in which residents can reduce their own impact on the environment.
Operators can also easily and quickly share ideas with residents and gather useful feedback on proposed building initiatives and schemes, as well as enabling the proactive reporting of building and maintenance issues, ensuring problems get rectified sooner, whilst at the same time providing a full digital paper trail.
Spike Living facilities the use of communal areas by allowing residents to book out a room or reserve a slot at a gym class, all via their phone, turning what typically is an archaic process into a seamless and easy task. This encourages residents to spend more time enjoying their buildings, and not having to worry about the stress of gaining access.
Supporting the local community
Our clients use Spike Living to bring the local community to their residents by utilising the ‘around me’ feature to provide much-needed visibility to smaller businesses and encouraging their residents to explore what’s on their doorsteps. Building operators can also partner with local shops and restaurants to offer residents exclusive discounts and incentives, all via their residents’ app.
Measuring performance
Residents’ apps like Spike Living provide building owners and operators the opportunity to truly understand what their residents are interested in, from amenities and services usage, to monitoring resident satisfaction. You can also analyse the performance of each building and identify areas to maximise operational and cost efficiencies, such as response time to support enquiries, number of maintenance defects reported, and other complaints filed.
Summary
ESG may sound like a daunting and complex subject, but it can be achieved through consistent actions, communication, and a drive to make a difference from everyone involved in a development, from investors, operators, residents to contractors. It’s important to see ESG as a journey, and not just a destination.
Get in touch to learn how we’re supporting leading developers and operators with their ESG initiatives.
We kick off the first in our series of monthly blogs focusing on community engagement, where our Customer Success team will be sharing handy tips on how to drive engagement across your buildings, your local community, and most importantly with your residents.
What we’ve learned in July
With the weather being a mixture of sunshine and showers, coupled with restrictions being lifted here in the UK, we saw demand for in-person events surge once again, with amenity and event bookings increasing 167% across our client base, compared to June. Despite restrictions being lifted, it was also great to see that residents still wanted to connect digitally as well as physically, with forum posts up 80% since the start of the year, highlighting the importance of technology in keeping residents connected.
As the world continues to re-open (and hopefully will remain that way) here are 5 fun ways to boost engagement and encourage your residents to get to know their neighbours and your in-house team.
Green Fingers Club
Several of our clients with outdoor spaces have created a residents’ gardeners club. This is a great way to get residents outdoors and for them to enjoy your facilities, not to mention the benefits for their mental health. For those who are limited on space, even providing a few planters and pots for residents to grow their own fruit or vegetables can yield wonders. Once your garden is up and running, why not host a “green thumb” contest, encouraging residents to share photos of their prized crops on your residents’ app.
Trivia Night
Trivia nights are becoming increasingly popular and are an easy and fun way to get your residents out of their apartments and interacting with each other. Turn your residents’ lounge, lobby, or rooftop garden into a hosting space, and enlist your wittiest staff member as the host for the night to reel off the most obscure and wackiest questions.
Ice Cream Social
We all scream for ice cream! Everyone loves ice cream, but you can bring it up a notch by inviting a local ice cream van or vendor to come to serve residents. As with any event you organise, don’t forget to announce it on your residents’ app and make sure to include some mouth-watering photos to entice those with a sweet tooth.
Scavenger Hunt
With the weather being slightly disappointing in July, some of our clients held scavenger hunts. This not only encourages people to get out and explore their buildings but also provides entertainment for both children and adults alike. When a resident finds a particular item, why not ask them to turn it into the reception desk to claim a prize. This gives you the chance to chat with them and get to know them a little better.
Pet Photo Contest
If your property is pet-friendly, let your residents show off their furry friends and compete for a prize. You can create categories like funniest pet pose, happiest pet, grumpiest cat, etc. Create a dedicated forum where your residents can post their entries on their residents’ app, and then select a winner for each category. This also lets like-minded neighbours get to know each other and will encourage them to plan pet playdates.
Have your own tips for driving resident engagement or decided to implement some of our suggestions above? Then get in touch, we would love to hear from you.
Guest Blog: James Dilgul, Head of Marketing at Fixflo, the UK’s leading maintenance software provider.
With residents spending more time in their properties in the past year than ever before, residents have had the opportunity to really assess the conditions they’re living in, and nice-to-haves like fast internet speed and room for a home office have unsurprisingly become need-to-haves. And when it comes to problems around the property, residents want them fixed – and fast. Nowhere has this focus on good service been more pronounced than in the Build to Rent (BTR) sector.
With most of BTR’s communal amenities being closed due to the pandemic, repairs and maintenance have taken centre stage – repairs and maintenance were referenced in almost 1 of every 5 reviews according to Homeviews’ 2021 Build to Rent report.
We look at how the way you handle repairs and maintenance impacts resident satisfaction and how to get it right.
Keep it simple – a vast majority of the reviews focused on the need for clear, simple ways to report issues and stay informed as to what was going on in their block. Resident apps like Spike Living and specialist repairs software such as Fixflo were popular – HomeViews’ survey found that BTR operators using Fixflo were rated higher than those who weren’t (4.5/5 to 4.2/5), with those questioned rating the ability to access and report their issue on a portal 24/7 as a key part of their resident satisfaction.
Speed is of the essence – unsurprisingly quick response times came up in a significant number of reviews. With more residents being at home last year, the need to respond to repairs and maintenance issues in a swift, timely manner has taken on new importance as residents spent most of their time at home; pending maintenance issues could be affecting them more than usual.
Satisfactory solutions – another key finding of the report was the necessity of achieving satisfactory solutions to the issues at hand. Being able to log your problem and be guaranteed a fast response falls short if the end solution is not satisfactory – residents expect effective contractors to be engaged quickly and efficiently. Again, BTR operators who used Fixflo scored well in this regard, as the software allows contractor qualifications to be verified and their services engaged automatically, while also providing basic maintenance assistance for those solutions that may not require a professional.
While all the report’s findings seem to point firmly at the need to invest in resident and maintenance software to boost resident satisfaction, Fixflo’s managing director Rajeev Nayyar recommends taking an ‘omnichannel approach’ to repairs communication as the best way forward. “The best operators are adopting an omnichannel approach to resident communications, giving them the options to communicate by online or in-person where they have on-site staff. From a resident’s perspective, ease of communication and access to relevant updates are critical, as is getting repairs resolved easily, quickly, and effectively.”
Learn how Spike Global and Fixflo have partnered to create a complete BTR resident communication solution here.
Promising an enhanced resident experience and a smarter, more efficient building operation, the new partnership between Spike Global and FixFlo will deliver a seamless property communication and maintenance management solution for BTR residents and property managers alike.
Industry-leading resident engagement and building management software provider Spike Global and specialist repairs and maintenance management software provider, Fixflo have announced an integration partnership designed to provide a complete property communication and maintenance management solution for BTR operators and property managers.
The new partnership enables residents to manage everything within the Spike Living portal, from communicating with other residents to reporting a repair, getting notified about upcoming maintenance events, and managing deliveries and visitors. Empowered by Fixflo’s innovative and multilingual repair reporting system, residents will be prompted to give all necessary details about the maintenance issue from the first instance, enabling property managers to diagnose issues accurately without the need for back-and-forth communication with residents.
Simon Bushell, Director at Fixflo, underlined the significance of delighting residents at the right moments in their customer journey and how this motivated the partnership: “While repairs are rarely welcomed by residents, they are great opportunities for building operators to impress residents with a prompt, intuitive and transparent experience. With Fixflo, residents can report a repair through their Spike Living portal anytime, anywhere, using 40+ languages. They can also be kept in the loop of how the issue progresses through their property manager’s schedule. Here at Fixflo, we are excited about this new partnership and helping building operators and property managers manage their portfolio more efficiently while enhancing the resident experience.”
Jeremy Heath-Smith, CEO at Spike Global, highlighted the expected operational gains for building operators, another key driver behind the integration plan: “We are excited to be partnering with Fixflo, bringing together Spike’s leading resident engagement and building management software with Fixflo’s award-winning maintenance management solution. This will enable property managers to plan, schedule and carry out a repair much faster, whilst ensuring residents are kept up-to-date and informed at all times.”
The property sector has traditionally been slow to adopt technology, however, the pace of innovation has increased dramatically over the past year, largely driven by the challenges brought about by the pandemic. There will be more change in the next decade than there has been in the last 50 years, and as we enter a new era, property managers will feel the impact the most.
Working as the lynchpin between the property owner and the tenants, property managers handle all tenant-related issues, acting on behalf of the landlord, carrying out key tasks such as:
Communicating with tenants and owners
Maintenance and repairs
Keeping to budget
Below are a few areas we believe technology will have the most impact on property managers now and in the future.
Real-time access to information
As with the way of the world, we’ve come to expect immediate gratification. We want answers to questions instantly, without having to wait for a response. Residents are no different. Gone are the days when they are prepared to walk downstairs to reception or pick up the phone. Mobile resident portals like Spike Living gives property managers an opportunity to promote a whole host of content that may have previously been provided on request. From frequently asked questions, appliance guides, to fire safety procedures, as well as the latest news from the wider community, having all this information readily available means that more often or not, tenants can find the information they need themselves, whenever they need it. This reduces the workload on property managers and saves them from repeatedly responding to the same questions.
Furthermore, important documents like signed contracts and policies and procedures can also be stored centrally and securely ensuring that paper-based copies do not get lost. This makes contracts and vital information easily accessible, and notifications can be sent to residents whenever there are newer versions needing to be reviewed and signed, allowing for full traceability.
Improved communication
Property management is a people business, with property managers simultaneously having to keep tenants, owners, and contractors happy. Given that research by NMHC and Kingsley revealed that 92% of residents prefer digital communications, offering a way to connect digitally to property managers is a must. Previously, disparate communication between these different groups meant property managers would spend half their time on the phone, typing with one hand and writing an address with another. Using resident apps like Spike Living, property managers can now easily and quickly communicate directly with all parties, allowing messages to be sent instantly and recorded centrally.
Reduced administration work
The Samanage State of Workplace Survey found that workers spend an average of 520 hours a year on repetitive services and tasks that could be easily automated. Reminding residents when their rent is due, when deliveries are ready to be collected from reception or providing building updates are just some of the tasks that solutions like Spike Lettings and Spike Living can take care of.
Then there are the communal areas to think about. Most modern apartments have amenities that can be enjoyed by its residents. Onsite gyms, games rooms, and meeting rooms have become the norm. Being able to open an app and book a room turns what could be an archaic process into a seamless and easy task, encouraging residents to spend more time enjoying their buildings, and not having to worry about the stress of gaining access.
Maintenance management
One of the most time-consuming parts of a property manager’s job is the handling of maintenance issues, with minor tasks easily turning into major ones if they aren’t dealt with quickly and efficiently. Without an easy and simple way for residents to report maintenance issues, they can often go unreported. For instance, a leaking pipe that drips once per second can add up to over 13,600 litres of water a year if left unfixed, not only costing money but also potentially causing considerable damage.
Mobile apps speed up the communication in these instances and allow residents to quickly provide your maintenance staff with better details about the task ahead. By using Spike Living, all enquiries and defect tickets can be logged centrally, as well as being tracked and shared between teams, keeping the resident informed at all times.
The same can apply when wanting to communicate directly with residents. Mobile apps enable the in-house team to be proactive and provide real-time alerts, notifying residents when a lift is out-of-service, allowing them to plan around it.
Better Resident insights
Do you know what your residents really want from their buildings? What do they care about? What amenities are being used the most?
With resident apps, you can understand and gain insight into these types of questions. You can learn what amenities and services residents are interacting with, what queries are being asked, and what content they are most interested in. This enables property managers to provide residents with what they truly want, taking the guesswork out of managing properties.
Summary
Technology is giving property managers the opportunity to work more efficiently, and with the use of resident apps streamlining manual processes, this allows property managers to focus on the most important part of the business: their residents.
Learn how Spike is working with a growing number of customers to drive resident engagement and satisfaction by downloading our brochure below.
Ask any landlord or property owner what the most stressful part of their rental business is, and their likely response will be tenant turnover. Ensuring resident satisfaction can seem like a daunting task, but with digital technologies such as resident portals and mobile apps, they can have a positive impact on your bottom line.
Here are 5 ways in which resident portals can lead to an increase in tenant retention.
Why is tenant retention important?
Low retention is a problem because gaining new tenants is not a cheap process, and any month without rent is not just a loss of income but a potential expense. Tenant quality also plays an important factor, as poor-quality tenants often result in costs not recoverable from the security deposit alone. When acquiring new tenants, there are a whole host of factors that quickly increases the costs:
Advertising – Listing and promoting your property online using sites like Zoopla or Rightmove requires you to pay a fee, and the more properties you have to list, the more that fee will be.
Letting agent fees – If you employ a lettings agent, the letting fee can range from several hundred pounds to the first month’s rent.
Vacancy time – In reality, you are unlikely to find a tenant that is move-in ready, so on average a property could be vacant for around 22 to 33 days, or even longer. That means one to several months of no rent coming in.
Turnover costs – Average turnover costs within the industry come in around £1,200. However, depending on a wide variety of factors specific to the property, this number could be significantly higher.
Prioritise communication
According to NMHC and Kinglsey’s 2020 Apartment Resident Preferences Report, 31% of residents who do not choose to renew their lease are seeking better apartment management. By prioritising communication, you are showing your tenants that their comfort and their issues are important to you. If tenants are always having to chase you down to get an answer to their question or a solution to their problem, the likelihood of them staying around for very long is reduced.
By offering residents a mobile portal, you are providing them with a central place to communicate with you. Rather than being constantly bombarded with phone calls or emails, day and night, you can simply review and respond to all queries that have come through via the portal.
Furthermore, with resident portals like Spike Living, you can also promote a whole host of content, from frequently asked questions, appliance guides, to fire safety procedures, as well as the latest news from the wider community. Having this information online means that more often or not, tenants can find the information they need themselves, without having to disturb you.
Finally, small personal touches go a long way in showing your tenants you value them. For example, by capturing their date of birth, or original move-in date, you can then provide personalised acknowledgments of things like birthdays and moving-in anniversaries, which is an easy way to help your tenants feel cared for.
Efficient maintenance and repairs
Maintenance, repair, and appliance replacement costs are among the main concerns when it comes to increasing margins. Repair costs during a bad month can easily outweigh profits. Having quality tenants who take pride in their space will certainly help keep maintenance and repair costs low, but they can be even lower.
One of the advantages of solutions like Spike Living is that it allows tenants to report issues when they arise and ensures you can respond in a timely manner before they potentially escalate to a much bigger problem. Without an easy way to get in touch, your tenants may leave an issue unreported. For instance, a rattling boiler left unchecked could ultimately mean being replaced much earlier than needed. Mobile apps speed up the communication in these instances and provide your maintenance staff with more information about the task ahead. Spike Living captures all enquiries and defect tickets centrally, so they can be tracked and shared between teams, keeping the resident informed at all times.
Using a centralised communication tool, you can also be proactive when it comes to informing residents about issues within the building. For instance, if you know that the lift is going to be serviced at a particular time, you can let the tenants know in advance, so they won’t be surprised when they see the lift is out of action.
Pre-qualify and screen all tenants
If landlords do not start with a qualified and quality tenant, retention rates will be the least of their worries. Tenant screening is the most important part of the rental process and has a measurable impact on the potential turnover rate. Early detection of tenants who could cause damage to the property, break their lease, or pay rent late will help property owners and landlords to begin the lease with the best possible option.
Spike Lettings provides complete end-to-end tenant management, starting from initial enquiry, through the reservation stage, all the way to moving in. Tenants can view the progression of their tenancy, communicate with your team, sign contacts, and even make payments, all within Spike. We recently partnered with Flatfair to make the tenant onboarding process much slicker, meaning upfront deposits are no longer needed. Tenants can simply pay a one-off membership fee equal to one week’s rent (+VAT) at the start of their tenancy, authorise their debit card and settle bills at the end – similar to hotel’s check-in and out.
Offer online services
Another way to avoid unexpected vacancies is to have a modern approach to tenants accessing the services they want. According to research by NMHC and Kingsley, 58% of renters would rather pay rent using a resident portal mobile app than a property website via laptop/desktop.
When rent is easy to pay, tenants are more likely to pay it. If they have to jump through hoops to pay their rent, the chances of it being late increases. With solutions like Spike Lettings, you can also send out reminders to tenants a day or two before their rent is due and can even automate confirmations to let them know that their rent has been paid. This will also make your life easier, especially if you manage multiple properties. Instead of waiting around for payments to come in or having to chase down tenants across multiple properties, you can easily view the status of each property, what rent has been paid, and what has yet to come in, all via a single dashboard.
If you have onsite facilities like a communal gym or meeting rooms, resident portals can provide tenants with the ability to book themselves. This encourages them to enjoy the facilities, without needing to phone or email anyone every time they want to gain access. Staff can also set limits on the number of people who can use a facility at any given time, ensuring amenities are COVID-secure, and users are adhering to social distancing guidelines.
Community engagement
Research by Apartment Life found that the more friends a resident has within their building, the more likely they are to renew their lease. For instance, if they have 1-3 friends, then there is a 38% they’re renew, and if they have 7 or more friends, the chances jump to 47%. With features like clubs and forums, Spike Living allows an easy way for tenants to find others in their building who share similar interests, such as a book or wine clubs, as well as enabling residents to organise their own events to get to know each other.
Thinking about the even bigger picture, you can also connect residents with local shops and services, bringing convenience to their lives. Many of Spike’s customers team up with local businesses to offer special discounts to their residents on anything from cleaning services, dog walkers, to local restaurants.
It’s also proven that residents who are engaged with their local community are often happier than those who are not, and tend to post positive reviews about where they live on websites like HomeViews. These reviews can help attract new prospects and keep occupancy rates high and having residents as champions is an effective tactic if you want to increase interest in your property, whilst reducing your marketing spend.
Summary
To boost tenant retention landlords must be proactive. This means not waiting until a tenant is unhappy or threatening to leave before taking care of their issues. It also means being accessible, consistent, and flexible. With technology solutions like Spike Living and Spike Lettings, landlords and property owners can ensure tenants remain informed and engaged at all times, and ultimately a happy tenant is much likely to remain a long-term tenant, making it better for your bottom line.
Learn how Spike is working with a growing number of customers to drive resident engagement and satisfaction by downloading our brochure below.
Recent research by Building Engines revealed that 75% of real estate professionals feel confident that building occupants consistently receive important information from them, but only 25% of occupants agree. Introducing a resident portal can help to bridge this gap, allowing residents to engage more widely with their local community, book amenities, and even interact with other residents outside of social events, thanks to the likes of online clubs and forums. However, resident portals can also play a much more important and crucial role – ensuring your residents are kept up to date with the latest safety information.
As a landlord or property manager, it is part of your responsibilities to follow fire safety requirements for the safety of your tenants and property. You are also required to show evidence that you have done everything within your power (that can reasonably be expected) to protect your property and tenants. This includes things like fitting the correct alarms and making sure the furniture you provide is safe, but also informing residents of what to do in an emergency, including providing evacuation plans.
More often or not, this information will have been shared as part of a new resident welcome pack during moving in day, alongside a stack of other paperwork needing to be read, signed and filed. How do you ensure residents have read and fully understood everything, or have filed it somewhere that can be easily accessible if required? And what happens when you want to issue a newer version – do you print and mail out updated copies, or do you send out an email with the latest version attached, hoping it manages to somehow dodge the dreaded junk folder?
Using a resident mobile app, such as Spike Living, this key information can be stored centrally and shared easily with every resident at a push of a button, notifying them that there is an updated version to be read and reviewed. You can also empower your residents to report any potential issues they spot by allowing them to log issues through the built-in ticketing system, ensuring all enquiries are tracked, and dealt with swiftly, keeping the resident updated.
Recently, one of Spike’s customers had a major incident within one of its buildings, and along with other traditional methods of notifying residents, they were also able to send out an urgent push notification informing residents within minutes about an immediate danger, so they could take the necessary action and evacuate the building. They were then able to provide regular updates about the incident afterwards and respond to any queries and concerns that had been raised.
Technology has made communication between property managers and residents much easier, breaking down traditional barriers that had previously existed, allowing residents to become more engaged and informed when it comes to fire safety.
Spike Global’s, CEO, Jeremy Heath-Smith, features in May’s Showhouse magazine where he talks about how the pandemic has pushed many property managers online, and why house-hunters are increasingly interested in what their community is like, who their neighbours are, what support and services are immediately available to them and, by moving into a new home, how their lifestyle can be enriched.
Fuelled by the rise of social media, where users can create meaningful interactions with members of their local community, connecting with neighbours online has quickly become the new norm. With face-to-face contact limited over the last year, this has accelerated the trend towards increased digital engagement. Developers have found a need to instil a sense of community through resident portals and mobile apps, providing much needed social interaction for residents, as well as access to services.
It’s proven that residents who are engaged with their local community are often happier than those who are not, and tend to post beaming reviews about where they live on websites like HomeViews. These reviews can help attract new prospects and keep occupancy rates high. And since influencer marketing is becoming increasingly important, having residents as champions is an effective tactic if you want to increase interest in your property, whilst reducing your marketing spend.
Having helpful and friendly on-site staff can play a role in keeping residents happy and engaged, but how do you ensure your staff are interacting with every resident? That’s where online portals and apps can help – enabling your team to offer that ‘personal’ experience to all residents equally.
We outline the reasons why resident portals have become a necessity for driving engagement, rather than just a luxury.
Enhance Your Events
Holding regular social events is crucial in allowing friendships between neighbours to blossom. Research by Apartment Life found that the more friends a resident have within their building, the more likely they are to renew their lease. Without any friends living in their community, residents only have a 29% chance of renewing. That number jumps to 38% if they have 1-3 friends, and if they have 7 or more friends, there’s a 47% likelihood that they’ll renew.
More often or not, your on-site staff already recognise the importance for residents to connect, and likely already offer regular social events. With a resident app, community managers can communicate the details of the event, and via a bookings tool built into the portal, gain an accurate idea of how many residents to expect.
Resident portals also offer ways for residents to interact with each other outside of social events, thanks to features like clubs and forums. Residents can post their own event announcements with neighbours – we’ve seen residents start their own book clubs, and even arrange communal BBQs and cooking classes. Considering Spike connects more than 200,000 residents with their local communities, it’s highly likely your residents would appreciate their own community mobile app if you were to offer it.
Enable Your Residents to Self-Serve
Gone are the days where residents have the time (or desire) to pop downstairs to speak to concierge or phone a specific number at a certain time to get the information they need. They want things done when it suits them, without having to involve anyone else. A mobile portal enables residents to complete important life admin, like paying rent, booking the gym or swimming pool, reading the latest community announcements – without having to rely on anyone else.
To some, the notion of self-service increasing resident engagement may seem counterintuitive. However, on-demand services deliver better efficiency for both residents and on-site staff while at the same time providing a more personalised experience.
Improve Communication Between Residents and On-Site Staff
Without a mobile app, when residents want to report an issue with their property or building, they will either need to wait until the next time they pass concierge or send a dreaded email that seems to always go unanswered. This might not be an issue if they are reporting a minor issue such as a light being out, but if there’s a water leak, you want to be alerted straight away. Mobile apps speed up the communication in these instances and provide your maintenance staff with better details about the task ahead. By using Spike Living, all enquiries and defect tickets can be logged centrally, as well as being tracked and shared between teams, keeping the resident informed at all times.
The same can apply when wanting to communicate directly with residents. Mobile apps enable the in-house team to provide real-time alerts, notifying residents when a lift is out-of-service, or a package needing to be collected from reception. Or more importantly, sending out an urgent push notification informing residents within minutes about an immediate danger, such as a fire in their block, so they can take the necessary action such as evacuating the building.
Connecting Residents With Their Local Communities
When a resident moves into your building, they may be unfamiliar with the surrounding area. Connecting them with shops and services, or details that can bring convenience to their lives is a great way of ensuring residents feel engaged from the offset. Many customers team up with local businesses to offer special discounts to their residents on anything from cleaning services, dog walkers, to local restaurants. If you are already doing this, great, it’s something else that can be housed in your resident engagement portal, so it’s easily accessible to all.
Learn how Spike is working with a growing number of customers to drive resident engagement and satisfaction by downloading our brochure below.
