Pub. 1 2016 Issue 3

8 www.ctaahq.org 䌀吀䄀䄀 吀䠀䔀䌀伀一一䔀䌀吀䤀䌀唀吀䄀倀䄀刀吀䴀䔀一吀䄀匀匀伀䌀䤀䄀吀䤀伀一  T hings go wrong. It’s just part of life, even if it isn’t one of the more pleasant parts, and even if you have invested strongly in the idea of excellent customer service and have done your best to avoid failures of any kind. If you dread service failures and think they mean being required to talk to people who are angry with you, take a deep breath. It doesn’t have to be that way. As someone involved in the management of a multifamily community, you should know there is a paradox about failure. It is natural to think that when a service failure occurs, you are likely to hurt the relation- ship between your organization and the person or family who is renting from you. Fortunately, however, it is possible to use the failure to actually improve the relation- ship you have and to end up with tenants who are even more satis ed and loyal now than they were before the service failure. How do you bring about that kind of an end to the story? You do your best to resolve the problem as quickly, e ec- tively, and e ciently as possible. After everything is done, you then go over the problem and the resolution and decide what lessons are there for you to learn. Why does it work? When something goes wrong, people’s emotions tend to run high. ey care about the outcome of the problem, but they also care about how you treat them. What this means is that you need to look at every problem as having two parts: the service failure is the f irst part, but the people who are involved are the second part. You can’t have a successful resolution to any problem if you ignore the second part. As a result, xing problems also means addressing the well-being of the people who are involved. Mark Vanderhoof, who is the corporate maintenance training specialist for CWS Apartment Homes, has experienced rst- hand what it means to x a problem and improve a relationship at the same time. CWS is an acronym that represents the last name of the three owners: Jim Clay- ton, Bill Williams, who founded the business in 1969, and Steve Sherwood, who joined the rm in 1977. Today, this highly successful company owns apart- ment communities, mobile home parks, and luxury apartment communities. Some time ago, Mark Vanderhoof was running a community that had a Class A property. A couple had moved in, but when the refrigerator stopped working soon after that, they called him. e rst order of business was to gure out how serious the problem was. He headed over to the apartment as soon as he could, but along the way he stopped at a nice restau- rant and bought a gift certi cate to cover the cost of a nice dinner. en he went to see the couple that had called him. After he arrived, he looked at the refrig- erator himself. It was just as broken as they said it was. He told them that he was going to have to call someone else in order to resolve the problem, and he gave them an idea how long it would take before the refrigerator was either xed or repaired, but he did more than that. • He told them he would reimburse them for the cost of any food that went bad because of the refrigerator failure. • He gave them the restaurant cer- ti cate. e result was two people who still had a broken refrigerator, but they also had an assurance that the problem would be taken care of …and they had a nice dinner to look forward to as well. In the apartments his company owns, Mark Vanderhoof makes sure there is al- ways someone there who has the authority to make purchases like that in order to create some goodwill. Maintenance tech- nicians are trained to take the initiative in that as part of their jobs. THE SERVICE RECOVERY PARADOX