How to Use On-Demand Maintenance Support as a Marketing Tool

If you're winging your maintenance requests and playing it by ear, you’re derailing your resident retention and new acquisition strategy.

Studies show that 44% of those polled want real-time maintenance support. Meanwhile, things like community engagement features earned 9% and an efficient concierge ranked at 5%.

The idea is that we're no longer living in the days where old-school call centers were the epicenter of customer service.

Today’s residents want on-demand service with a reliable system to handle their maintenance requests.

Who wants to wait a week to hear back about a broken fixture?

The good news is that you can bolster your maintenance efforts and build a powerful marketing strategy in tandem.

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Create Updated SOPs for Maintenance Requests for Your Team

Do you have standard operating procedures for maintenance (SOP) requests?

It should look less like notes on a napkin and more like a formal document with a run-down of your process.

👉 How are requests assigned and to who?

👉 How are the processes communicated to the resident?

👉 How are maintenance requests tracked?

Make sure every aspect of handling maintenance requests is covered in your SOP.

If someone is taking PTO or your community experiences high turnover, a rock-solid SOP that everyone understands means your residents won’t notice any hiccups.

It’s not just about your team–your residents should also understand your processes.

They should be able to immediately get the ball rolling on their maintenance requests and understand next steps.

All of your residents should trust that their request will be handled exactly the way you’ve outlined in your community documents, website, online portal, or marketing materials.

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Systematize Your Service Tickets

Now that you’ve created an SOP, what happens when your residents submit a maintenance request?

Does it go into a box?

Generic email?

Voice mail prompt?

Consider switching to an automated online portal where residents receive an immediate auto-response that their request was successfully submitted and what happens next.

You can de-escalate frustrations before they start when you’re transparent about the process and residents trust they’re being taken care of.

Once an appointment is scheduled, you can also send out automated texts to remind residents about the appointment and what’s being fixed.

No long waits.

No limbo.

No wonder what happens next.

Use On-Demand Maintenance as a Marketing Tool

No one wants to live in a place where maintenance requests are ignored, take too long, or are chaotic to manage.

Prospective residents want to know your community is worth their investment.

It’s not hard to know if you have a maintenance problem in your community.

✅ Is everything in your suggestion box about how bad the maintenance process is?

✅ Are your online reviews littered with complaints about maintenance?

✅ Are your maintenance workers grumbling because residents are constantly stopping them and complaining?

But don’t get complacent if you’ve never heard a word about your maintenance.

Hearing nothing at all isn't necessarily a good sign, either.

It could mean your residents are disengaged from the process or you’ve simply gotten lucky.

Unless you're seeing positive reviews or getting feedback that residents love your approach to maintenance, it needs attention.

Prioritize on-demand maintenance, whether you offer an online portal and prompt follow-up or live calls with the maintenance team.

Next, make it part of your new marketing strategy so that current and prospective residents know that it’s a selling point for your community.

It doesn’t take much.

Tip 💡: Incorporate more maintenance-related ads in your PPC campaign, social media posts, and flyers that make maintenance as much of a selling point as your amenities.

Add Photos of Your Maintenance Team to Your Website

Are your leasing agents and markets plastered all over your community website while your maintenance workers are a blip on the radar?

Truth 💣: Thinking of your maintenance workers as contractors or neglecting team photos because of high turnover is a short-sighted strategy.

You can still add team photos of your maintenance lead or any on-staff members, even if it’s the person who mops the front hallways and tides up the amenities.

Residents need to see a name with a face to know who’s taking care of their requests.

Tip 💡: Team photos also signal that your community is an actual community where your team cares about the living conditions, not just a place to live and write a rent check.

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Hyper-Focus on Maintenance in Your Online Reviews

Encouraging and nurturing online reviews is part of any good multifamily marketing strategy, but it’s also a way to show transparency.

If you're getting positive reviews mentioning maintenance, odds are you are delivering an above average experience.

Make sure you promote this within your marketing–it's one of the biggest fears renters have before moving into a new community.

But when former residents complain about maintenance, own up to it.

Share that there were issues in the past, and thanks to comments like theirs, your community now has a new on-demand maintenance policy where residents can get prompt answers and escalate their requests.

This acknowledgement and solution-based approach shows prospective residents that your community is proactive.

It’s not difficult for leads to conclude that if you’re proactive about maintenance, you’re also proactive about safety and cleanliness and everything else. 📣 📣 📣

Your action-based approach also tells new residents they can trust that their next bathroom flood will get resolved instead of managing the crisis on their own.

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