Are your engineers able to resolve work orders from anywhere? Or are they stuck running back and forth to their desks to communicate with tenants, log billables and check for updates?
In CRE’s new normal, your team and tenants are more dispersed than ever. Some work from home, and others are spread out across your portfolio.
As re-occupancy picks up steam and CRE buildings compete to drive lease renewals, now isn’t the time to let service levels in your building slip. To get tenants the fast service they expect, it might time to take your work orders mobile.
Wondering if the time is right to mobilize your work order management? Here are three surefire signs:
- Poor Team Communication
- Inconsistent Tenant Service
- Slow Work Order Resolution
Poor Team Communication
Your team is usually spread out across the office and different buildings in your portfolio, including areas with poor service. This can reduce team efficiency and lead to missed assignments, unprepared engineers and frustrated tenants.
But working from multiple locations doesn’t have to mean a disorganized team.
If you struggle to keep everyone on the same page and on track to meet SLAs, mobile work order management could be the answer. That way, your team can see what work orders need to be addressed from anywhere, and can send updates to tenants in real-time.
This prevents any vital information (including billables) from falling through the cracks. Engineers also benefit from full work order details – including photos of the problem. That way, they show up to each task prepared with the right tools, every time.
Are your engineers getting burnt out traveling back and forth to the office? By mobile-enabling your engineer team, team members in the field can receive and send updates to work orders on their mobile devices. They can also perform their best in areas without internet, like basements, boiler rooms and crawlspaces.
Inconsistent Tenant Service
Tenants expect consistent service – despite the logistical challenges to your team caused by COVID-19.
But the traditional work order process can be frustrating for tenants. They have to email, call, or submit work orders in person. After all that work, they have no way to track work order progress, leaving them wondering when (if ever) your engineers will show up.
This frustrating process can cause tenants to consider looking for a building with better service.
Now that many tenants have the option to work from home, they have even less patience for poor service in your buildings, such as difficult or slow work order systems. They don’t want to come into the office to submit work orders. Tenants want submitting and managing work orders to be easy – not another burden they have to deal with.
To provide a modern and tenant-friendly work order experience you need to mobilize your work order management.
With mobile work order management software, tenants can submit work orders from a convenient app. So, they don’t have to be at the office to get issues resolved. And, they can track the status of their work order from the same app, along with submitting any updates or notes directly onto the work order.
This way, your team can set realistic tenant expectations — and consistently exceed them.
Plus, mobile work order management makes it easy to collect tenant feedback on a continuous loop. So, you exactly where you need to improve before it escalates into tenant turnover.
Slow Work Order Resolution
You constantly compete with other buildings in your area to attract and retain tenants. However, slow work orders can be a huge strike against you. Tenants don’t want to be in a building where it takes days, weeks, or months to resolve even the simplest issue.
Now that you’re competing against the convenience of the home office, your slow work order management process could cause tenants to rethink lease renewals.
To leave your competition in the dust, you need to mobilize your work order management to resolve issues faster. With mobile work order management software, you can automatically prioritize work orders.
That way, you can address high-priority work orders (like burst pipes or broken heaters) faster – instead of just treating requests in the order they come in.
And, with mobile work order software, you can have real-time visibility into your team’s performance. So, you can see if your team is under or over performing and correct underperformance. Plus, you can see which engineers have too much work and reassign some of their work to other engineers to resolve work orders faster.
With work orders, the adage “you can’t manage what you can’t measure” proves true. With mobile work order software, you can generate analytics and reports from anywhere. This helps you find areas you can improve your work order service eliminate bottlenecks to resolve work orders faster.
Wrapping It Up
In today’s CRE landscape, tenants expect lightening-fast resolutions to work orders. If your work order system is highly manual and lacks mobile functionality, you’re missing an opportunity to make your portfolio more competitive.
By mobilizing your work order management, you can promote team continuity, deliver consistent tenant service, and resolve work orders faster. All of which can increase tenant satisfaction and retention – helping you stay competitive during a challenging time for the CRE industry.
However, not all mobile work order management platforms are created equal. When chosen unwisely, some can turn into more of a hassle than a help.
That’s why you should look at an industry-leading platform – like Prism. With Prism’s mobile work order management module, you can view and prioritize work orders from anywhere, and provide your team members and tenants with a world-class experience
Learn more about the value of mobile work order management by watching our on-demand webinar today.
