Gabfocus Spotlight: How do you use your property management software to communicate with tenants?

April 12, 2022

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3 min

Communicating with your tenants is one of the most important aspects of your business. Lucky for you, your property management software more than likely has communication tools built in to simplify and track customer interactions.

In this GabFocus Spotlight, Steven Jeffers of Bee Safe Storage, Brian Ward of USA Storage Centers, and Erika Weidman of Premier Pines Storage break down how each of their PMS systems help connect them with their customers.


Question: "How do you use your property management software to communicate with tenants?"

Check out the video clip below to hear their answer:

 

In this Gabfocus Session: Choosing Your Property Management Software, we spoke with Steven Jeffers (Bee Safe Storage), Brian Ward (USA Storage Centers), and Erika Weidman (Premier Pines Storage). We had a great time examining the ins and outs of different property management software systems. 

Check out the full Session to dive deeper! 

Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what the experts had to say:

SiteLink in particular has a lot of modules. So all our collections is automated now. So we have storage collections, that's a module site link that you just select your tenants, hit a button and you get an automated call, you get an automated text. So past the point of the move in, that would be your next contact with the customer is collections or your accounts receivable. There are other plugins that you can text tenants. I know when we've taken over properties, we have a hard time contacting people because for some reason they don't want to update their phone numbers with us or their addresses or if they even exist anymore, having that ability to text people and say, "Hey, we just bought this property, this is the new access hours, your rent is going to be due now on the first instead of whatever. Another part of that too is noting every interaction with your tenant too. My saying is that if you don't note it, it didn't happen, so SiteLink makes it very easy to note and to communicate with your customers through all kinds of different methods. So we're happy with that. - Brian Ward

Easy Storage Solutions has the same capability. The texting is definitely really nice and the automated invoicing. I can email different groups if the gate needs maintenance or if all of our RVs need to have something when we had storms. If we're doing whatever, we can just select different whatever tenants to contact and it automatically sorts them out and provides templates for different things where we can create a template and it inserts their name, all those kinds of things. So communication tools are good. - Erika Weidman

storEDGE is very similar to the other two in that, especially with delinquency stages and everything. I can set all that up on a corporate side an on day 23, if I want to send out text to remind them that hey, pay up soon or else you're going to go into lien, it will automatically send that out. And what I love about storEDGE too is that it will have a text box pulled right up and there can be easy two way conversational texting back and forth with my manager and the tenant. And all of that is saved in the tenant's notes. So when I'm going through and auditing a customer that's in lien, or if I'm dealing with a problem customer that has been escalated up to my desk, I can see every single conversation through texting, through email. And it even saves recorded phone conversations as well. So I can go through the entire conversational history with the tenant and can verify that nine times out of ten, my manager did exactly what they were supposed to do and the tenant is trying to pull a fast one by them so I can quickly figure that stuff out. But really, the automation with the communication makes it more efficient for my managers to be more present on the property and with the customers that come through the office door.              - Steven Jeffers

Your Property Management Software is a big investment.

Check out Chapter 4 in our Self Storage Investing eBook to learn more.

Self Storage Investing Playbook eBook - 2021 - Cover