After Hours Call Center for Property Managment, is it effective?

Question

I work full time and to date have been okay self managing about 13 different units. However I do plan to expand and I am trying to prepare in advance rather than wait for something to happen. With that said I know the 2am phone call is the thing that most people reference when they say they dont want to be a landlord. So far I have not had that but I have had interrupted vacations and some other calls that were not the best timing. Thankfully none of these were do or die maintentance requests. But in order to avoid that has anyone used a after hours or any call service? Has this been effective for you? I still am capable of taking phone calls fo rmost of the day. But was thinking about outsourcing the after hours or calls while on vacay. I have researched and they are relatively cheap for the volume I would expect with base plans at $35 to $45 per month. So I would love to hear anyones experience with this.

And for those who do use these services I have 2 more questions. First question do you outline in your lease what qualifies as an emergeny. For example a tenant should not call an emergency 24 hour plumber for a clogged toilet. So I imagine you define clearly what qualifies as an emergency?

Second question assuming the emergency is valid do you have your answereing service call your 24 hour plumber direclty to dispatch them or do you have the answering service just give the number to the tenant. I would think that providing the number to the tenant would be better so they can coordiante and do the follow up with the technician versus my call center basically calling a 24 hour plumber and talking to their call center.

Im sure one my ask if all I am doing is paying a call center to give the tenant the number of a plumber than I can easily do that myself. However by having the call center in place it helps vett whether its an emergency first (if not they just call me during regular hours), before they run up an expense. All in all if it works than I may gradually move from just directing tenants to call after hours and have them call during regular hours too. Any thoughts or prior experiences.

Nathan Gesner · Answer

I manage almost 350 rentals and I get fewer than four "emergency" calls a month. About half of them are tenants that have locked themselves out. You shouldn't have to worry about high volume in that regard.There are a few options:1. Set up a Google Voice phone number and provide it to your tenants for ALL maintenance calls. Tenant calls the number and is required to leave a voicemail. You are notified the message is there and can act on it or save it for later if it's a non-emergency. You'll never have to actually interact with the Tenant unless you want to.2. Use property management software. There's free (or very cheap) stuff available like Cozy.co or TenantCloud.com that allow your tenants to submit maintenance requests online. This ensures you receive them and helps track them through to completion. If you do this, I still recommend providing a Google Voice number for emergency maintenance requests.3. Yes, you should spell out what an emergency is. Mine is defined as "anything posing an immediate danger to a person or the property." I provide some examples of an actual emergency (fire, broken water pipe, loss of heat in winter) and what does NOT constitute an emergency (loss of hot water, clogged toilet, or noisy neighbor).

John Underwood · Answer

If your going to have your answering service give a tenant a number to a 24 hour plumber why not just give all your tenants in case of emergency numbers so they have them. Let them know that they will have to pay the difference on non emergency calls that they call in.Then put your phone on DND at night.

Nathan Gesner · Answer

@Toan Hoang in my experience, most emergency calls are for loss of heat,water leaks, and lockouts.Lockouts are easy: tell tenants they will have to call a locksmith or place a lockbox on the property but only give out the code in an emergency.The others could be handled by the plumber.

Toan Hoang · Answer

@Matthew OlszakUnderstood thanks. Sounds like you actually own the maintenance business since your not dealing without ourside vendors or your savvy enough to do work yourself. So thats definitely a good thing and makes for one less middleman. Thanks for the feedback

Matthew Olszak · Answer

Yes, she knows mostly who to contact and coordinates the maintenance visits, and for a few she directs them to me. But these aren't outside vendors, most of my maintenance is handled in-house. Also, that portion is a VERY small part of her work day, so its more or less just a time-filler and piggybacking on other tasks. Maintenance coordination alone for me wouldn't warrant hiring someone.

Toan Hoang · Answer

@Matthew OlszakDoes your virtual asst coordinate the routine service requests with service provider and tenant. Do they actually work wirh tenant on what times are good for service?Some of that back and forth requires coordination and i was not sure how much support the virtual asst provides.

Matthew Olszak · Answer

This is what my PM Intro Letter says in the maintenance section: That text phone # routes to my virtual assistant (but could also go to me), and the phone # is my google voice #. Most emergencies are NOT actual emergencies. If there is no hot water at 3am, frankly they can wait until business hours for us to get someone out there. Heat out, eh, likely urgent. Active leak = emergency. Structural damage, fire, etc = emergency. Emergency means further damage will immediately occur if the issue is not resolved right then.

Toan Hoang · Answer

@Nathan G. Agreed but I imagine it could be managed if the vendor is only authorized to do emergency work which i spelled out. My guess is 99% of any maintenance especially emergency is plumbing related. So if you spelled out the 3 things that they are authorized to do is there any harm in the tenant calling directly? Even if the tenant calls for something stupid like a clogged toilet the plumber should not respond as an emergency. In this model you have to have a good relationship with the plumbing services so they follow your instructions. Would you agree that most maintenance is plumbing HVAC?

Nathan Gesner · Answer

I take the call and then coordinate with the vendor. I'm in a small town, as you know, and vendors are unlikely to answer the phone from a stranger but they will pick up for me because I bring them a lot of business, they have my cell in their phone, and we have a relationship.I know some owners that leave a list of vendors with their tenant. They authorize the tenants to report maintenance issues to the vendor and then the owner pays the invoice. That's a lot of trust and a recipe for disaster.

Roni E. · Answer

I would not give a tenant direct number to any service provider as that then removes you, the property manager from the equation and that is the responsibility for PM. I would definitely get a PM software check out Builduim also. Concerning the call center it is a double edge sword I would have a procedure and action plan in place before just getting a call center setup.