by Paul R. Bergeron III
One apartment owner has created a central repository for online feedback to help market its happy residents to prospective customers.
Count Berger Rental Communities as a company unafraid of online reviews. Rather than hide from online ratings out of fear of being exposed to negative feedback, Dan Berger, President, Berger Rental Communities, based in Southeastern Pennsylvania, made the decision to embrace online feedback. The company, which owns and operates 11 communities, including 2,323 apartments, doesn’t just encourage its residents to provide feedback. It also has taken the uncommon step of collecting all of the feedback it receives in a central website available to any prospective or current resident.
To collect responses from its residents, Berger surveys them when they move in, renew or give notice to vacate, and each time it completes a service request. Move-in surveys are given to new residents with their move-in gifts. Other surveys are completed anonymously using a free online survey tool. A request to complete a survey is sent via e-mail when activities such as maintenance requests are completed.
Berger encourages feedback of any kind so that it can focus on identified strengths while learning and practicing ways to improve. “The questions that we ask are geared towards us learning not only what our residents think about us, but how they actually feel,” Berger says. “We want to know about our actions that lead to our residents feeling great and we want to know what actions lead to our residents feeling upset, angry or vulnerable.”
Residents also can submit feedback in several places on the company’s home page, www.RentBerger.com. There is an area on the page for residents wishing to thank team members for the great service they received. These represent “wow” moments where, in the residents’ opinions, the Berger team members go above and beyond the call of duty.
In addition to internal surveys and feedback, Berger encourages its prospects and residents to use websites such as ApartmentRatings.com.
Berger estimates that Internet ratings sites provide approximately 38 percent of the posted comments, followed by onsite resident surveys (32 percent) and comments posted directly to Berger community sites (30 percent).
The Good and the Ugly
After setting up several systematic methods for encouraging and promoting all forms of feedback, the company created a central repository called Berger Reviews (www.BergerReviews.com). Any feedback that a community receives—both positive and negative; internal and external—is posted on this site. The company outsourced the design and development of the site at a cost of $1,500. It requires minimal staff time to maintain, according to the company.
Berger lets readers on Berger Reviews trace reviews back to the original source by leaving links to the websites that the feedback came from. “To our dismay, there are items posted here that make Berger management and staff members cringe,” Berger says. “However, the overwhelming amount of positive feedback that is posted is an honest and effective way for Berger Rental Communities to market to prospective residents and can inspire its employees.”
The company wants prospective residents to see the good, bad and ugly before renting and encourages them to check all online peer reviews, Berger says. “We are confident in our service and are willing to put it all out there,” he explains. “If we fail, the entire world can see and we are OK with that.”
One comment on the site, for instance, has a resident saying, “I was expecting someone to come back today to finish this job. The job is not complete.”
Expecting all reviews to be 100 percent positive would discount the genuineness of the review page, Berger says. “People understand that with the Internet, information spreads quickly and in mass,” he says. “Prospective residents are willing to overlook some bad reviews. Not everyone is going to like the same movie, and not everyone is going to like the same apartment.”
On the other hand, positive comments can improve a community’s leasing power. The company attributes this marketing strategy to helping to achieve an average occupancy in 2010 of 95.15 percent with 4.5 percent rent increases.
The positive reviews also validate employees’ hard work, as when one resident submitted a comment on the company’s website: “Greg called within a matter of minutes. He was reassuring and walked me through my emergency with my heater and is scheduled to come out first thing tomorrow morning. I feel comfortable enough to sleep tonight because of his help.”
“It means everything to our team members to see nice things residents say about them on a website,” Berger says. “It really encourages everyone to work as hard as possible to strive to please our residents.”
Paul R. Bergeron III is NAA’s Director of Communications. He can be reached at 703/797-0606 or paul@naahq.org.