Well-trained call center agents can sway prospective renters and capture missed opportunities.
The Camden Property Trust marketing team loves the idea of answering every phone call it receives at its communities. But it doesn’t love the idea of non-Camden employees taking the calls or spending the start-up costs needed to create an in-house call center.
Instead, the company took a unique, hybrid approach to the challenge. Camden rented a third-party company’s call center technology and launched an in-house group, using Camden-trained associates.
Industry research and anecdotal information is clear: Without a call center, apartment management companies miss as many as half of prospective residents’ calls. These companies also know that delivering a high level of customer service to those making the calls is critical. Call-center operators must be ready, willing and able to describe the community perfectly and entice a caller to set an appointment.
The approach taken by Camden, a Houston-based REIT that owns and manages 63,000 apartments nationwide, differs from that of regional company RMK Management. RMK, with 21 communities and 8,000 apartments units, employs a third-party call center company. But each is pleased with the results: an uptick in signed leases, a more focused onsite staff and a smoother daily operation.
RMK Reconsiders
When RMK’s Executive Vice President Diana Pittro first tested traditional, third-party call centers at her communities five years ago, she wasn’t pleased with the outcome. She says the problem wasn’t cost; it was that she didn’t believe call centers delivered a high enough level of service. “I felt that when using a call center, you lost a lot of the ‘warm and fuzzy’ feel to leasing,” she says. “You couldn’t rely on someone in another state to know your property as well as your leasing agent.”
Pittro, whose company operates primarily in Chicago and Minneapolis, has since reevaluated her stance. With the rental market in a slump lately because of the struggling economy, she says management firms must make the most of every lead in a down market. RMK rolled out a third-party call center service at three of its communities in different markets for six months beginning in December 2007, curious to see if traffic and conversion rates increased. Encouraged by the results, within a year, the company had instituted the call center service across its portfolio.
Call centers now bring in 20 percent of the traffic and account for 40 percent of the appointments made. “In a year where traffic is so precious, if I took out that 20 percent of traffic, my occupancy would probably be down two or three points,” Pittro says. “The call centers represent that many leases.”
Pittro says half of the callers who connect with her call-center operators make an appointment, a rate that is more than three times higher than those speaking to onsite staff. Because call-center operators can focus solely on taking calls from prospective residents, they are more effective at setting appointments than potentially distracted onsite staff, Pittro says.
The average call to RMK’s call center lasts eight to 10 minutes, compared with three to five minutes for onsite staff, Pittro notes.
“The call center employee doesn’t have a resident sitting in front of them discussing an issue, or the UPS guy trying to deliver a package, or a person waiting impatiently to start a tour,” Pittro says. “The only responsibility for call-center operators is to stay on the phone and paint the best picture of your property that they can.”
Pittro also found that 18 percent of calls made to her communities come at 9 p.m. or later. Without a call center, and with her company’s office hours, she says, capturing those leads is virtually impossible. “Callers interested in signing a lease don’t want to leave a message and wait for a call back,” Pittro says. “They want the information now.”
Camden: Build Your Own
Like RMK, Camden was concerned in 2007 that it was missing potential leads because it wasn’t able to answer every call. So the company tested two third-party call center vendors at 12 communities and found that 50 percent of sales calls had been missed because its onsite staff was busy with other duties.
“It’s not because the leasing staff aren’t taking calls, or because people are lazy,” says Alison Hall, Director of the Camden Call Center. “They’re busy leading tours or assisting residents.”
To address those missed opportunities, Camden rented the necessary technology to launch its own call center in Houston and promoted Hall to manage the center. One of her priorities, she says, was to staff it with employees who matched the values and skill set the company desired.
Hall assigned 13 agents and two managers to the call center and, she says, “the results have been phenomenal.” The center answers more than 1,000 calls per day from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on weekdays. Camden uses a third-party provider to take calls made after hours and on the weekends. Call center agents convert 47 percent of calls into appointments and 42 percent of those appointments show up. Camden sales agents close on 38 percent to 40 percent of those tours. In 2009, through November, Camden had leased more than 7,500 apartments off of leads that, without a call center, would have been missed or required a return call.
Like Pittro, Hall says training call center associates properly is paramount. “We have product knowledge meetings where we do nothing but study the properties, the models, the pool, the retail around the communities, directions, landmarks,” Hall says. “The agents are so knowledgeable that prospective residents will think they
work at the community.”
Because of that thorough instruction, call center associates are able to answer virtually any question, including those about national company policies such as the community to community transfer policy. And if the company is making a special marketing promotion in a given region, the marketing team is able to explain it directly to call-center agents so that the agents can describe it effectively.
Apartment providers only have one chance to make a first impression.
With a call center answering the phone, management firms can ensure potential customers schedule an appointment and gain a positive first impression.
Jeffrey Lee is NAA’s Staff Writer. He can be reached at jeffreylee@naahq.org or 703/797-0647.
RMK’s Spotlight on Service
A key to the success of the call center at RMK is the excellent customer service provided by its agents, a feature Pittro attributes to the vendor and her company’s educational process. All calls received by the center are recorded, and 90 percent of the time the agents do a great job. Pittro uses the most effective calls to help train new hires.
Just as important, RMK’s call-center vendor reacts to any criticism from Pittro instantly. “If someone doesn’t handle a call well, I make a call to the vendor and it’s taken care of,” she says. “If it’s someone who’s new and I don’t think they have enough experience, I e-mail the call center and they make sure the agent gets the
training they need.”
At one RMK-managed, high-end, urban community, for instance, the call center was not effective at making appointments at first. “I kept wondering, ‘Why is this not working?’ ” Pittro says. “The quality level of the property is so above the norm, I think we had a training issue.” In response, the vendor came to the property, researched it and took pictures, and then retrained its staff to properly sell its features. In short order, the numbers went back up. —J.L.
Call Center Management: Did You Know
• RMK has not cut staff since engaging the call center; in fact, leasing staff have increased their hours to be available late for tours and resident services two nights per week.
• At Camden, leasing staff are able to spend more time confirming appointments, touring and making the sale because of the call center. If a resident is unable to reach the community manager to make a service request, Camden call center agents can take the call and ensure the requests reach management. The third-party call center vendor handles after-hour emergency service requests.
• Because Camden’s call center is in-house, agents can quickly handle specific service issues or questions. If there is a problem at a community, such as a pipe breaking, the community can tell the call center immediately so that call center agents can inform current residents about what actions the community is taking to fix it. “Call center agents know in two minutes that the water’s been shut off and our agents can talk intelligently to concerned customers,” Hall says.
• Hall says making sure agents maintain a consistent, positive manner is critical. This way, their message comes across as well when making the sale at 6 p.m. as at 8 a.m. To keep agents upbeat, Camden holds call center events such as luaus and footballs parties. It has contests that enable staff to win days off and it decorates for holidays. —J.L.