Maintenance Mobile

Time management solution

By Erica Rascón on Oct 3, 2014 in People

When J Turner Research released its list of top ten apartment resident complaints, three of the top five complaints reflected renters’ dissatisfaction with onsite staff’s responsiveness; poor grounds upkeep, disorganized  staff and lingering maintenance requests lessen the chances of lease renewals and referrals. One community has discovered how Yardi Maintenance Mobile keeps staff on top of resident concerns before they become complaints.

During Wesley Fonseca’s time as a maintenance tech in the Atlanta area, he has worked at several apartment communities offering varying degrees of customer satisfaction. He has observed that time management directly affects a team’s ability to meet residents’ needs and provide top quality service.

“The toughest part of our job would be time management,” says Fonseca. “Being able to schedule work orders is important, so important. That will make or break a maintenance team. I’ve seen teams that were exceptional in time management and other teams that were just not and the property was in chaos.”

Without a convenient maintenance app, techs may miss out on details such as move-in dates, establishing a bad first impression when new tenants arrive to a unit that isn’t ready. Techs must also return to the leasing office several times throughout the day to sign off on completed assignments and pick up new ones, wasting precious time that’s better used out in the field. With few ways to handle scheduling conflicts, pop-up emergencies, and other delays, techs may arrive late to scheduled work orders or miss out on some entirely.

At Fonseca’s current community, Post Glen in Brookhaven, his team implemented Yardi’s Maintenance Mobile with great success. “I’ve seen my time management get so much better with Yardi because of how I’m able to access the work orders on my smartphone. Maintenance Mobile has helped me save time in that I don’t have to print the work orders. I can map out my whole day and give certain spaces for emergencies and that sort of stuff. I have the ability to add and drop work orders, and sign them off in the field. Also, being able to have what I need at my fingertips, right on the spot, has helped me be more time efficient.”

Fonseca has also noticed that tenants respond well to the technology. “Maintenance Mobile is a good selling point as far as the residents are concerned because everything is so technologically advanced now. They expect to see technology in use,” Fonseca says. “The residents have their place where they can put the different time of whatever day that they prefer for us to visit. They like being able to submit requests online, have us receive them, and then fix things and document them in a timely manner. They just love it.”

The photo documentation feature in the app has helped to minimize miscommunication and disputes between onsite staff and residents. “It’s a very good way to get all of the facts. Like, we transferred from [a competitor’s] platform and there was no such thing as posting a picture. You could take a picture and email it but it wasn’t as all inclusive as Yardi is. Being able to have all that together is so much more organized. We can show what was done and when.”

The scheduling and documentation features of Maintenance Mobile have improved work flow for the grounds technicians at Post Glen. But the app only supplements a skill that the team strives to cultivate on a daily basis: customer service.

“I practice customer service when I’m not at work and when I’m by myself, doing things right even when no one is looking. That’s really true integrity. That’s how it’s shown, how it grows. When I get around certain situations I can keep a level head because it’s already in me. I know what is the right thing to do in spite of what I feel, in spite of what another person says to me,” says Fonseca.

Maintenance Mobile helps staff members manage their time more wisely, resulting in less stress and more energy to take their service to the next level by focusing on customer engagement and preventative maintenance. “When we have the tools to manage our time well, we’ll have time to do things that are above and beyond, not just catching up with emergencies,” explains Fonseca.

To learn more about Yardi’s maintenance solutions, attend our webinar on November 4, 2014 at 11am PST.