Online reviews are a hot topic of conversation among management companies. Many companies spend an unnecessary amount of time and effort each week stressing over negative reviews and determining how to combat them. Last week we discussed how bad reviews are unavoidable, and shared tips on how to properly respond to reviews and use the feedback as a positive for your company in terms of focusing on where you can make impactful improvements.
We also shared tips why you should be asking for reviews to help drive up your ratings. Did you know FRONTSTEPS can help with this task? More importantly, when using the right tools, FRONTSTEPS can help drive reviews from happier residents. Here’s how:
Frequently survey your residents
It’s important to track overall sentiment among residents, as it can help you address issues before residents take to review sites to air their grievances. FRONTSTEPS offers a convenient eForm tool in our Connect package, making it easy to develop customized surveys for your communities.
Send out quarterly surveys asking residents for feedback on life in the community, including:
- Are they happy with the level of communication they’re receiving about things like community events, happenings, and news?
- Do they feel safe in the community?
- Are they enjoying the community’s amenities and do they feel like everything is properly maintained?
- Do they have feedback they’d like to share with your company on what could be done to improve the community?
Take the time to read through answers and analyze the results. When you identify an unhappy resident, personally reach out to them to thank them for their feedback and address their issues over the phone. Show them you’re listening, concerned, and are taking the feedback seriously. By hopping on the phone, you can likely prevent an unhappy resident from sharing these complaints on a review site.
Send out surveys after interactions with your team
Another great time to survey residents is after they’ve had an interaction with your team. Consider sending out surveys after residents have reserved an amenity or hosted a party in one of the amenities, had a maintenance request closed, or submitted an architectural change request. Ask them questions about how easy it was to do all of this online, if they were satisfied with the level of service your team provided, if they were happy with the end result, and in the case of reserving an amenity, if they enjoyed their experience and would consider hosting another party in the space again. This is a great time to again reach out to unhappy residents and address their issues first-hand.
Ask happy respondents for reviews
Use the survey results to help you identify happy residents to reach out to for reviews. When you identify happy customers, use the newsletter feature within Connect to send them a customized email asking them to share their experience with your company online. We recommend driving them to specific review sites by including a link to leave a review, as this is one less step a resident will have to take on their own to leave a review. If you have a lower rating on a specific site, consider driving residents there first. Don’t specifically ask them to leave a positive review, as many review sites discourage this. If you’re not seeing reviews after sending these emails out, consider offering a small reward to incentivize residents to take the time to write a review, like a $5 or $10 gift card to Starbucks or Amazon.
Positive reviews come from happy residents. Looking for ways to improve resident experience in your communities? Download our free guide!
