Resale documents are a reality of all HOA and Condominium management companies. Do you look at this part of your business as an inconvenience or an opportunity? Put another way, does customer service make or cost your company money?
With an average homeowner turnover rate of over 7%, your staff is continually servicing resale document buyers. These can be current homeowners selling, real estate agents or escrow/title agents, or lenders trying to secure financing for your potential new resident. Each of these represents a very different relationship, but all with the same goal of a smooth transaction.
In this blog, I have an early challenge for you. This challenge should be done even if you have a resale documents vendor. Based on the results, you will know if they are giving the type of service you deserve.
The big challenge
Get your customer service team to record the amount of time they spend on the phone or email regarding customer service for resale documents. We are only looking at the customer service aspect for this measurement, not the actual processing of documents. The team includes the front desk, managers, accounting, processors, or anyone who participates in customer service for resale documents. Without this baseline, you have no way of knowing how much of your time is consumed by this part of your business. You may wonder why this is important; it's because every moment they are doing resale document customer service you are losing productivity in their primary job.
If your resale document processing goes smoothly, meeting everyone's goals, there should be minimal customer service. If you find that is not the case with your team, it is time to make some changes.
Measuring the results
There are two ways to measure where improvement is needed. First, which department received the most inquiries (calls, emails, fax, etc.). In order to truly find these statistics you must drill down. One way to do this includes grouping, the inquires by category and then tracking the number of inquiries by category.
Secondly, look at which department spent the most time on customer service. A simple yet effective way we found to track this is to simply have employees start the stopwatch on their phone every time a call is received or returned, as well as time spent reading and replying to emails or chats. At the end of the day, that number should continue to add up until you find the actual time spent on customer service.
The solution is simple but not easy
Now that you know which department is most distracted by customer service inquiries and what they are regarding, it is time to make a change to stop or reduce the calls. At GDN, we know this process all too well. As the pioneer in online resale documents, we did a lot of this as we blazed the trail over the last twenty years. We got really good at 'making the phone not ring', which is why we thought it would be good to share this with you.
The simple formula to achieve this is to determine which inquiry (question, issue, problem) is causing the most calls. Next, focus on a solution; what can be done to remove or reduce these inquiries? Then simply make a change and measure the results, while finding the next one and repeat until you have redeemed all or most of the time.
I know this seems overly simple, but saying it and doing it are not the same. It is essential to pay attention to the details; the smallest detail is often the one that causes the biggest issue.
Reaping the rewards, redeeming the time!
It may take some time to clean up or correct all of the issues, but it is time well spent. As you reduce the customer service impact on your staff, you increase their productivity in other areas, hopefully, what they were hired to do. That may sound harsh, but when someone from accounting has to deal with a customer service issue, they are not focused on their highest and best use. Even the person whose job is customer service shouldn't be dealing with resale document issues. They have enough on their plate with residents.
Customer Service benefits with GDN
As mentioned earlier, our goal is for the phone not to ring. If our product does what it is supposed to, our phone won't ring. If we do what we are supposed to, your phone won't ring. For over two decades, we have been reinventing and refining customer service in the resale document industry. For more on how we approach customer service check out our video content on the subject below, or click here to schedule a conversation with our CEO.