Should You Even Care About Online Reviews?

[Christian Brodin]

There probably was a time when online reviews probably didn't get any notice. You would have the occasional resident who was in eviction, or hit with a late fee, that would vent his or her frustration online and it wouldn't matter that much. Or you would have the property manager at the community next door flame you in an attempt to draw customers away from you. But as time has passed the importance of reviews have increased exponentially.

Just ask yourself would you eat at a restaurant with bad reviews?

In a recent study from the National Multi Family Housing Council the researchers made this conclusion about bad online reviews:

As many as 52% of all renters will avoid a community that have bad reviews.

So what is an apartment investor to do about property managers not managing their online reviews?

In our case here is what we did:

Set up admin accounts for Google, Yelp and ApartmentRatings where the property manager can go in and respond to any reviews posted on these sites. Even if it is a simple acknowledgment of the review, we always include the contact information of the property manager, when they can be reached, and ask them to take the discussion off-line, and if possible and do it in person instead. We have found that this is by far better than ignoring your customers comments, and will over time balance out any nasty responses.

I do want to add here that ApartmentRatings allow the person posting the review to be anonymous. This has led to a lot of internal debate if we should be there or not. In the end we have decided that it is better to respond than to let reviews be left hanging out there.

Included a post in our weekly meeting to go through any new reviews and what the property manager has done to respond to the review. We also tracked common complaints to see if there is a larger pattern that we can address and learn from.

Move-in courtesy calls. 90 days after move in we will call a resident to ask if anything is missing or if there is anything else they need. If the customer is fully satisfied we will ask if they are willing to post an online review about their experience (100% OPTIONAL!!).

Annual Customer Satisfaction questionnaires. A basic letter will accompany each resident's renewal notice 90 days before their lease expire. Here they can either take a simple survey on paper, or follow a link to our online survey (we use surveymonkey, but you can also use Google Forms). Again, if the resident is fully satisfied we will ask them to post a review, or a testimonial online?

The results?

While it was a huge undertaking to get everyone onboard at first, and setting up the system to track and manage the online reviews, it has had a direct impact on our performance.

At one property we managed to save over $50,000 of proposed upgrades because our residents told us that they didn't want the exterior upgrades that we were proposing. Instead they just wanted us to power wash walkways, and paint hallways instead! Talk about good ROI!

At other properties our renewal ratio has stayed 100%, even after raising rents. Constant communication allows us to improve our services, and amenities keeping residents satisfied.

This is in addition to the possibility of saving over half of the people who consider renting at our communities when they read online reviews.

Even for smaller apartment communities?

Yes! While you might not have a website for your community, I strongly advise you to follow up with your residents to see what they say online, or in person. It is usually the small things that will make a huge difference in the success of your property.

Finally, our ratings are not 100% across the board, nor do we expect them to be. But we do see a clear connection between addressing our customers reviews, responding to them, and the performance of our properties.

What is your experience with online reviews? Do you ignore them? Do you respond to them? And what has the result been for you?

Thanks,

Christian