Resident expectations have evolved. With the introduction of the digital age, property management companies must reconsider their approach to resident experience to satisfy a demand for real-time communication, and seamless cross-channel support. At the same time, it should also be acknowledged that, in order to meet these new needs, it is necessary to digitize the many day-to-day tasks performed by residential property managers.
Brad Keenan is a board member at radioCITY Condos located in downtown Toronto. This is a community consisting of two condo towers totalling 416 units. An effort that began six years ago, radioCITY Condo’s digital transformation evolved from a simple tech tool implementation to a one-stop shop, moving from a paper-based way of doing things to meeting the needs of tech-savvy residents in a digitally connected world. Here, Brad provides an insight into the story of the community’s transformation with Concierge Plus.
Well the fact that we literally were using pencil and paper. We had several different binders at the concierge desk; one for parking, one for guest-suites, one for the party room, and one for the other boardroom. As you can imagine, record keeping was only as good as what that was. There was no way to have any insight without going through binders with years of information.
The board also wanted to track the usage of the several amenities offered by radioCITY Condos. It’s a pretty expensive piece of real estate in downtown Toronto with a bunch of amenity space and we wanted to know if they were being used or not.
Furthermore, we also wanted to provide a great resident experience to our residents. radioCITY Condos consists of a South Tower and a North Tower. Most of our amenities are in the North Tower, and I live in the South Tower, which means that I had to walk to the North Tower to check amenity availability, check-in with residents manually, get a form for them, and fill out the form. These were all paper-based forms and couldn’t be downloaded as we had no digital tool.
There is also much more transparency now as the board can see the same thing as the property manager. Board members and property managers can see service requests coming in, the type of service requests that come in, and how many are outstanding. We no longer have to wait for a board meeting or visit the property manager or contact the property management company in order to find out whether the property manager is drowning in tasks. We can get an instantaneous insight ourselves by logging into the user-friendly platform.
Another example of the tremendous amount of transparency, which we never had before is the discussion forum usage. The board or the property management company don’t get involved in that, but residents are constantly posting something whether it is complaints or compliments. It’s a good conversation for our residents and a good place for them to exchange information, which we never had before. Residents are constantly putting stuff up on the Classified Ads, the discussion forum is being used regularly and our Announcements are all in one spot. It’s a one-stop shop, and the impact is like night and day.
Whether you’re switching vendors or implementing a solution for the first time, it’s critical to select a property management platform that addresses the needs of your community, saves your team time and money, and ultimately, grows your portfolio.
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