Nobody loves complaints. In fact, sometimes we want to be like little kids and stick our fingers in our ears, hoping that if we can’t hear the complaint it will just go away. Unfortunately, unresolved complaints only tend to become louder and more pronounced over time. That’s why it’s so important for team members to own resident complaints in their manufactured home communities.
At Newby Management, number 5 of our 10 team member requirements states “Any team member who receives a complaint ‘owns’ it. A one hour response time is mandatory!” This is such an important part of how our company handles complaints. It’s easy to feel as if a certain complaint is someone else’s problem, but when we take responsibility for them we are able to come together as a team to get them resolved.
For example, if someone on the sales team is out showing a home and a resident voices a complaint, it’s the responsibility of that team member to follow-up with the complaint. It can be as simple as letting the resident know that you will take care of it or alerting the appropriate party as soon as you’re done showing the home. If possible, the team member should send themselves a quick reminder about the issue so they remember to take care of it back at the office.
But the process shouldn’t stop there. The team member who received the complaint should either handle it or alert the person who can handle it. Then, the complaint needs to be dealt with in a timely manner. At Newby Management, we strive for a one-hour response time on complaints.
That’s why it’s so important for the person who received the complaint to follow-up on it. If the team member who you’re handing the issue off to is out of the office or unavailable it might be best to consider other options for dealing with the problem at hand.
The team member who first received the complaint should take it on as their own. This means staying with it until resolution. This could also mean talking to the other team members involved in the resolution to see how the situation could best be handled in the future.
The important thing is empowering all team members to handle complaints as they come. You want everyone to feel like they have the ability to resolve issues as they come up. When that happens, it takes pressure of the managers of manufactured home communities and allows for a faster response time.
How do you handle complaints in your manufactured home communities?