There are plenty of property management companies on the market today, most of which offer cookie-cutter services. The thing that will differentiate your firm from all the rest is how you treat your clients. Exceptional service isn’t just nice to have. It’s critical to your future success. So how can you know whether your company stacks up? Here are five essential metrics that will help you measure and improve client service performance.

Response Time

How long do your customers have to wait for someone to pick up the phone or get a response to their text or email? In the highly competitive property management industry, the faster you deliver support, the less likely you’ll be to lose clients, which is why response time tops the list of important metrics to track.

Where is the bar set? For incoming calls, research has shown that the majority (53%) of customers feel that 3 minutes is an acceptable amount of time to wait for a support agent. For email, studies indicate that customers feel a response time of 24 hours is reasonable, though many companies are raising the bar on this and promising response within four to eight hours or less.

Whatever you do, don’t take too long. One study by Oracle found that most people will take their business elsewhere if they have to wait longer than a week to get an answer to a question.

Problem Resolution Time

Customers are highly influenced by a company’s ability to resolve their issues. Ask yourself how many interactions between the customer and your employees are needed to resolve a problem? Obviously, the best answer would be zero, because that would indicate that your customers aren’t experiencing problems at all. Realistically, however, the answer you strive for should be one.

If it takes four or five interactions to solve an issue, that indicates your customers are either not reaching the right individual on the first try or your employees could use some more training. If it’s the latter case, investing in education is wise, especially since 62% of people say having knowledgeable employees is the third most important aspect a company needs to provide good customer service.

Adequately Met Needs

Did you know that 55% of customers say they’ll commit to a company based on the ability to easily locate the information or help they need?

Tracking whether or not your proposed solutions are helpful is important, not just to ensure that your current property management customers’ needs are being met, but also to hone and improve your future problem resolution.

Support metrics enable you to measure whether a customer was able to successfully solve a problem, either by phone or through your knowledge base. For instance, monitoring the time being spent on your help pages or articles can tell you whether or not your resources are actually helpful. If visitors bounce within just a few seconds, it means they couldn’t find what they were looking for.

Customer Experience Rating

86% of consumers say they’d gladly pay more for a better customer experience. It’s that important, which is why one of the most critical feedback points is how your clientele would rate their overall experience with your property management services.

How to measure:

• Use relationship and transactional surveys to get a sense for what customers value the most
• Recognize that customer loyalty depends largely on where you are in the relationship (the service you provide on the first exchange will be different than that of a long-term client)
• Identify the best opportunities to improve the experience at every interaction point

Property management companies that have mastered the ability to manage the customer experience have positioned themselves for solid future success.

Contact Volume by Channel

The last critical area to greatly increase customer happiness is paying attention to the volume of calls and incoming inquiries you’re receiving. This will tell you when you need to devote the greatest amount of service resources.

Additionally, tracking the channels used to seek that support can tell you what your customers’ preferences are. When you have a better idea of when and how your property management clients are likely to reach out, you can plan ahead and be ready. Remember – you can’t delight if you don’t plan.

Delivering an exceptional client experience is essential to helping your property management company stand out and keeping you a step ahead of the competition. The five metrics above should provide you with ample information to ensure that your clients are being wowed at every turn.