Maintenance Call Management Helps Tenants and Property Managers

Property management offices need to have control of their maintenance calls.

I lived in a large 500+ unit apartment complex a few years ago. One evening I noticed that the carpet was soaked in my bedroom closet. It had not been raining or snowing for days so I figured there must be a broken water line or my upstairs neighbors (I lived on the ground floor of a 3 story building) had a problem.

I called the office, it was after 9pm so I had to leave a message. It was urgent that I get the water turned off, my furniture was about to be soaked. After a few minutes I had to start moving my belongings but my bed and dresser could not be moved. I was frantic, and decided to call 911. This was not life threatening but when you don't get a response from the office management you start looking at other options.

Just before I started to dial 911 I got a call from someone from the apartment complex. I explained the situation and they would have to call someone to come over. It took 2 hours to get the water turned off that night.

This type of emergency does not happen very often but when it does it can be expensive for the apartment and frustrating for the tenant. Voice mail in this situation just does not do the job. Connecting directly to a maintenance person could have saved a great deal of time and expense.

Instead of voice mail the apartment should have had a Virtual Receptionist. Then I would have been able to speak with the maintenance person immediately. Some of my belongings could have been spared the drenching they got.

If the complex had a Virtual Receptionist call management system I could have had options to leave a non-urgent voice message if the problem could have been handled the next day or I would have the option to connect with a maintenance person directly. This is call management, making a phone system work as your emergency needs.

They figured out that the water main under my apartment had been punctured a few years earlier when the apartment was built. It took time for the pressure to eventually remove the dirt and bubble up through holes in the concrete slab. I moved.