|
|
Property Companies' CRM (1)
Interaction between advisors and members
Grant Zhang , Marketing & Sales Manager, Shanghai eCaseSoft Co.,Ltd.
www.g-cem.org
Question: How can we judge the property companies' CRM? How can a reputable property company in China that has national property coverage establish and maintain good customer relationship management? Is membership, e.g. all property owners and tenants become members, a workable tactic?
Suggestions For And An Analysis Of Property Companies From An Owner's Viewpoint
In fact, I think that club / membership is just a matter of approach. As a property owner, I believe that providing better services is a more important part of property management, as a club or owners' association will be organised by owners for communication purposes. Personally, I may not join the club organised by the property department because this might not prove more convenient for me.
The essence of CRM is to understand customers' minds and foster better communication with the end users through various means. This helps to improve the company's workflow and techniques, etc, and then helps to win over the market.
A more important thing for property companies is an effective service and feedback management system that can track customer satisfaction levels (independent of surveys done by service staff). Moreover, FAQ booklets should be produced and distributed to the business section. This will provide more timely solutions to some problems while also reducing the workload. To a certain extent, the owners' personal and material safety can be better secured under such circumstances.
An internal experience bank that solves all sorts of problems should be established, so that the necessary service quality could be maintained and the relevant experience could be shared despite staff turnover.
Moreover, relevant repair techniques and technical levels should be raised. For example, to avoid inconvenience in examining the leaking of internal pipes, the introduction of internal detection technology may be used to replace digging, the current method. As a large national company, your company should be equipped with such a facility at some point.
An internal direct phone line for owners of a small property, as well as a service department should be established. A single phone number that is always engaged should be avoided. Meanwhile, the system can automatically identify the caller's room, staff name, service records and currently requested services, etc. Well-trained operators should replace general service staff whose voices are not suitable.
CRM Application In Property Companies
Mr Deng Meng, Director, Beijing Synlead Information Technology Co. Ltd.
Synlead has been tracking and analysing property companies' CRM needs and providing relevant solutions for a relatively long time now. Before answering the question, let's look at the customer targets and business characteristics of property management or property services:
The property companies' customer targets include owners (who own the property rights) and tenants. Both owners and tenants are defined as customers.
The property companies' business areas: (a) the servicing and management of internal property; (b) the servicing and management of external public areas, public properties, venues and public facilities; (c) profit-earning sales or paid services (real estate agents, community commercials, car parks, club management, etc.), including property management fees and other possible payable fees (water / electricity / heaters, etc.), and other charity activities.
Service sales are part of the essential nature of property companies. In other words, their business area is a combination of services, sales and marketing, etc. If property development companies focus more on project operations and the management of property sales, then property companies focus more on customers (owners / tenants) and their properties, no matter whether the subsidiary relationship between property development companies and property companies exists or not.
This article does not discuss whether the subsidiary relationship between property development companies and property companies should be terminated, nor whether profits generated from external areas, public property / areas / facilities, etc. should be returned to the owners. This article will explore the issues about CRM implementation that property companies should consider.
First of all, mechanism and system reform in which customer relationship management is the focal point is both a necessary and urgent matter for property companies. The long-term undesirable property management law / regulations, property companies' non-transparency of business management, lack of standards, low efficiency and high costs, etc. have been the factors that have caused many conflicts between owners / tenants and property companies. Owners / tenants' suspicion and mistrust of property companies have resulted in the delay and refusal of some fee paying. As an operating entity, closer relationships with customers at the levels of attitude or image are not enough, property companies should focus on customers in the aspects of concepts, management methodology, system and operating mechanisms, etc. They should realise that customers are their sources of income. As the society develops, owners / tenants are becoming more and more aware of their rights while more and more of them have started to focus on high-quality customised services and a high-quality community environment. Competition in the property market has gradually emerged, as property companies are actively carrying out reform so as to raise customer satisfaction levels and staff productivity rates, as well as to reasonably increase profits. The property companies' introduction of CRM is a timely response to the development of social and market demands.
When implementing CRM, property companies should take into account their business diversity.
1. Customers and suppliers
For property companies, owners could be a person (individual consumers) or a corporate body, and so do tenants. The property assigned to the property company for sales may be purchased either by a person or a corporate body. Facilities such as elevators may involve contracted service providers.
2. Property services
. Accurate customer resource files should be established, including data relating to internal properties, external public areas, public properties / venues, public facilities, etc. For instance, the files of internal properties should include account names, property types & dimensions, defects, handover dates, warranty, current condition, owners, and present tenants (if any).
. Customer personalised service requests should be recorded in a timely manner, including problem description, property range, the significance of the problem, condition, and handling priority. A knowledge bank should be established to enable service staff to find out solutions. Tasks should be assigned or adjusted in time and service staff members have to record maintenance conditions.
. When providing property services, service agreements (customised or general) between property companies and customers should be complied with.
. Paid services may involve sales activities such as the replacement of parts. The corresponding sales order should include the type, quantity, sales price, terms and cost, while property companies should conduct inventory management.
. Property companies may need to record expenses during the service process. For example, when contracting out wall painting services, paint costs as well as labour costs and equipment hiring costs should be recorded.
. Conduct statistics based research and analysis on customer service requests and customer satisfaction levels.
3. Sales for profits
. As real estate agents, property companies will get the margin of property prices as returns. This process may include locating sales and rental business, assigning staff to chase the sales, identifying specific properties, preparing quotes / contracts / proposals based on pricing schemes, recording relevant sales fees, etc.
. Manage property's external public areas, public properties and venues, public facilities, such as elevator advertisements, community club management, etc.
. Sales of other quantifiable paid services.
. Conduct statistics based research and analysis of sales for profits, explore valuable customers and projects that will generate more sales.
4. Payable property management fees and chasing fee payment
. Did customers pay property management fees on time? Did the company receive all payable fees? Which customers failed to fulfil their obligations?
. Did customers pay bills (water / electricity / heater, etc) on time? Did the company receive all payable fees? Which customers failed to fulfil their obligations?
. Management of other payable fees
5. Introduce marketing into the community, start to provide customer care
. CRM's important value
In addition to introducing the concept, methods, approaches and goals of customer relationship management into the operating entity, CRM has also introduced the marketing concept, mostly used by sales organisations in the past, into service organisations. Property companies should realise that service-oriented property companies also need to adopt marketing as a strategy, so as to better foster interaction between the company, staff, community and customers.
. Enhance personalised customer care and constantly improve differential service levels
Moreover, property company management includes specific capital use and account management, etc. This should be done by financial management knowledge and the corresponding software. This article will not discuss this further.
For a "property company with a certain degree of reputation and a certain level of national coverage" or for a newly emerged "small property company", what matters is whether it has really reformed its management based on a customer-centered approach, and whether its CRM implementation resulted in a "win-win-win" situation among customers, the company and its staff. Other people's comments on the company's CRM implementation do not matter. The last problem to be solved is the technical problem of combining centralised management and free-hand management.
Finally, my personal opinion of the concept of "membership, e.g. all property owners and tenants become members" is that, membership is just a marketing approach. Applying the strategy of having membership of a club (owners' / tenants' activities) is fine. However, before answering the question of whether membership should be extended to other aspects, you need to tell me what sorts of differences you expect to find out by using a membership system, and what is your purpose.
|
|
|
Email to Friends |
Print
|
|
|
|
| Top |
|
|
