Key Points:
It’s hard to beat the big brands. They’re sharp on price, amenities, and web presence. But a 5-star independent facility maintains better relationships with its customers, hands down.
Take it from Stephanie Giorgio at Storage World, a multi-location self storage business spanning Reading, PA and the surrounding areas. Even with multiple locations, she puts customer relationships first every day, from documenting after-hours emergencies to following up on leads to giving existing tenants personalized care.
It’s not just about delivering better customer service. Maintain strong relationships with your self storage tenants. Get to know them, their stories, their families, and do so in a genuine way they can see.
Why put in the extra effort?
“At the end of the day, the goal is simple,” Stephanie tells us, “Process rentals and maintain satisfied customers.”
But there’s another reason to stay tuned-in to your tenants. If you know the people at your facility, you’re less likely to be caught off-guard. It puts you in a position where you can prevent problems instead of needing to fix them.
That kind of proactive service leads to better reviews, which lead to better performance all around.
In Stephanie’s words, “Building relationships with my customers is…how I provide superior service.”
When you know your tenants' individual situations, you serve them better. Someone coming to you to declutter their garage long-term has different needs than someone sorting through inherited items. If a tenant has hit a rough financial patch, they might need to move to a smaller unit. Even satisfied tenants go from feeling just okay about your facility to thrilled when you send them that get well or congratulation card tied to a big life event.
We’ve written before about how superior service translates to tenants who champion your facility. And at the end of the day, it shifts your service from reactive to proactive – you see things coming and better predict a tenant’s needs.
But is that something you can do with a hundred tenants? With three hundred?
Stephanie thinks so. Across multiple facilities, she tries to form those relationships with every tenant, and staying organized helps her do it.
“I visit each property daily and will set goals for myself to complete at each site,” she says.
The level of dedication it takes to monitor each property and its tenants may sound like a lot up-front. But 5-star service does mean 5-star effort. And you need to keep up with your tenants and the big events in their lives! It’s a vital part of the mission.
Getting to know your tenants doesn’t sound like a core part of your security measures, and it’s no replacement for quality security cameras. But Stephanie considers it a necessary part of the package.
“I generally know enough about my tenants, their family, and their circumstances to identify if something doesn’t seem right and monitor it accordingly,” she says.
To be clear, it’s not about keeping tabs on everyone or going overboard with your surveillance. It’s about seeing past the transactional side of things and establishing an honest rapport with your tenants. It’s hard to know if someone’s acting strange if you don’t know what their normal looks like.
And any retailer can tell you that reducing theft at their store includes making every customer feel seen – honest shoppers like it, and potential thieves realize they’ve got eyes on them.
When she’s visiting each facility, Stephanie isn’t just checking unsecured units and addressing security concerns. She’s going out of her way to get to know tenants on the property better and maintaining a positive rapport with them. When she’s making follow-up calls and responding to tenant concerns, security risk assessment is folded into that step.
Consider the points of contact in your customer experience that give you a little time to get insight on each customer:
And if you’re the kind of facility that hosts community events often, you’ll have even more opportunities to connect with your tenants.
A solid sense of community with your tenants makes your service better – and that’s what sets you apart from a national chain.
Your facility stands out from the big chains by showing tenants how much you care. You need a gameplan for what 5-star customer relations looks like. It’s another competitive edge you have over your competition.
By forming connections with your tenants, you stay ahead of problems and deliver seamless service that goes beyond expectations.
Because at the end of the day, a 5-star storage facility goes beyond customer expectations. You can learn more about running an elite storage facility by staying consistent with your operations and training a top-tier staff in our other articles in the elite manager series!
At StoragePug, we build self storage websites that make it easy for new customers to find you and easy for them to rent from you.
