.svg)
Hidden beneath the surface of looking at a massive data set like all resident reviews over the last 20 years are golden takeaways about specific areas of your business. As a part of this blog, I want to do deep dives into specific categories to help you understand more about how residents perceive your performance in that area. Attend any national conference and you will know that many in the industry have felt the strain of labor shortages, especially in regards to maintenance personnel. Likewise, you probably know that part delays are still very commonplace, especially during the peak summer months when parts for appliances like air conditioning are in high demand. How could being short-staffed in maintenance or slow to perform service because of a part delay affect your resident satisfaction and online reputation? We will answer that this month, doing our first deep dive into the topic of Maintenance Timeliness. Here are some key findings:
What is Maintenance Timeliness?
As you would expect, comments within reviews that reference how long it takes maintenance to perform service get categorized as Maintenance Timeliness. Specifically, our AI tool looks for comments like “still waiting to be fixed,” “takes forever for maintenance to come,” “have to keep asking for them to come,” and “it took them over 3 days to address my work order.” These types of comments get separated from thoughts around how well the work order was completed (Maintenance Service) and how well the maintenance team left the work order after completion (Maintenance Cleanliness).
Maintenance Timeliness Does Drive Online Reputation Scores
Performance in this category does have an effect on your online reputation. In terms of star rating performance, Maintenance Timeliness has the 8th biggest dispersion between when it is complimented (4.59) versus when it is complained about (2.33). This means that it is an operational area that can definitely be “make-or-break.” In other words, if someone is complimenting you in this facet, odds are that they are a pretty happy resident; if they are complaining about a lack of timeliness on a work order, they are likely to be dissatisfied. This is consistent with J Turner Research’s previous findings that maintenance has a strong correlation to resident loyalty- very rarely will a resident have strong dissatisfaction about maintenance and still be happy overall.
Maintenance Timeliness is Relevant
In terms of frequency, Maintenance Timeliness appears at the 6th highest rate of all 22 categories that our AI tool measures. Moreover, it is a category that gets mentioned fairly frequently in both low scoring reviews (8th most often) and high scoring reviews (5th most often). Overall, it is a category that is mentioned in a more positive fashion. When removing star rating from the equation, Maintenance Timeliness was mentioned positively (10.1%) almost twice as much as it was mentioned negatively (5.3%) in 2023. The likelihood of it being mentioned positively in any given review has stayed relatively consistent going all the way back to 2010 and even during peak COVID.
Inversely, we see less consistency in complaints about Maintenance Timeliness. From 2003 to 2011, Maintenance Timeliness was complained about in 10-13% of all reviews. This number has tailed off greatly, not surpassing 6% since 2016. This was epitomized in 2020 where residents showed a lot of grace, only complaining about timeliness issues on work orders in 4.4% of all reviews. With that in mind, the takeaways from the frequencies are as follows:
- Maintenance Timeliness appears relatively often
- Residents are very willing to compliment performance
- Residents have been willing to show grace on timeliness issues when communication was provided (for example, during peak COVID)
Maintenance Timeliness is Not a Sole Motivator of Reviews
Despite Maintenance Timeliness’ importance in the grand scheme of online reputation and resident satisfaction, very rarely is it the only thing that makes someone satisfied or dissatisfied. By isolating reviews where the reviewer only references one operational area (one category), we can make assertions about the operational areas that are sole motivators of both positive and negative reviews. In this case, only 2.1% of 4- and 5-star reviews that have one category are about Maintenance Timeliness (6th most). Likewise, only 1.7% of 1- and 2-star reviews that have one category reference Maintenance Timeliness (12th most). Despite the fact it is a good indication of how happy a resident may be, the bottom line is that Maintenance Timeliness is not typically going to be the only thing that drove someone to be satisfied or dissatisfied and subsequently leave a review.
Maintenance Timeliness and Communication Go Hand-In-Hand
With that in mind, it is important to identify what else residents are talking about in these reviews. Maintenance Service and Condition of the Unit both understandably appear quite often in reviews mentioning Maintenance Timeliness. If someone is writing a review about how quick the maintenance team operates, it is likely that they are also commentating on how well they performed the work and how satisfied they are with the overall condition of their unit. However, it may surprise people to know that 34.94% of reviews with a complaint about Maintenance Timeliness also have a complaint about Communication. This shows that if there are delays performing maintenance work, it is paramount that onsite teams properly and proactively communicate. Delays coming as a surprise will likely lead a resident to leave a low scoring review complaining both about the delays and a lack of transparency around the situation. Lastly, there is also a strong correlation between Maintenance Timeliness and Customer Service. This gives us an insight that residents believe performance in this area reflects on their relationship with the staff and their perception of how much the staff cares.
Maintenance Service is More Important
I would be doing you a disservice if I did not add a disclaimer about maintenance performance as a whole. No matter which way you dice the data, Maintenance Service gets mentioned more frequently than Maintenance Timeliness. If you are going to pick between one or the other, it is much better to do the job slower and well than fast and poorly. Although… residents would love it if you did both well 🙂
In Conclusion
Maintenance Timeliness gets mentioned often enough and with enough dispersion to deserve our full attention. Even if it is not as important as getting the work order done well or as being generally good at customer service or communication, it is an operational area that residents care about. Operators should try to perform in this facet, ensuring that when things go awry, that they communicate well. Otherwise, they should expect their online reputation and resident satisfaction to suffer. On the flip side, deliver timely and effective service and you are making loyal residents.
You cannot control some of the extenuating circumstances that may negatively affect your ability to perform, but being proactive can save your face online. If you are doing a good job with communication and even being mindful enough to order spare parts ahead of time, you should expect to see a positive reflection on your business and online reputation.
Thank you for reading! We will be back in July with our half-year recap.
ABOUT THIS BLOG:
The insights in this blog came from utilizing J Turner Research’s text categorization tool, a proprietary AI software that will objectively show you your operational strengths and weaknesses based on anything anyone has ever said about you online in reviews. What is being said is incredibly valuable because it is essentially the "why" behind your scores. Reviews are unprompted descriptions of why a resident is satisfied (left a high star rating) or dissatisfied (left a low star rating). This means that what is being complimented and complained about can be seen by owners and operators as drivers of satisfaction/dissatisfaction.