Our law student, Liz, for example, posted her initial comments about Waterton Residential’s failure to remove the tree at 3 p.m. Less than 12 hours later, at 1 a.m., the following comment appeared on Liz’s blog: “Liz, my name is Peter Larson, and I’m the regional manager for Waterton … .” Larson explained that the company would remove the tree as soon as possible and would “be in touch with her tomorrow.”
“I got in touch with my property manager today,” Liz wrote soon afterward. “I know they’re trying their best … . I’m very happy with this turn of events.”
All the apartment managers interviewed for this story say they now carefully track and respond to criticism, including online comments such as those in Liz’s blog post. The methods managers use to track those comments can be very simple. Several say they use a free “alerts” service from Google that sends them an e-mail whenever their company name or the name of one of their communities is mentioned on a public website. However, not all apartment managers are enthusiastic about responding to negative comments online—at least at first.
“There’s been a lot of resistance,” says Seiler. “In the apartment industry, there are people who have advocated not empowering these review sites.” Eight months ago, after much testing and discussion, Trinity began its “reputation management” program, in which managers respond to every comment about their company that appears online, including misspelled, late-night, anonymous rants.
“It’s easy when you first read a review to get defensive and think you didn’t do anything wrong,” says Staciokas. “But all of them need to be responded to—negative reviews and positive reviews.”
The response to a negative comment should be polite and concise, say multifamily experts. If possible, the reply should also lead as quickly as possible to a solution of the resident’s problem, if the problem can be solved. “Always, no matter how negative the comment, you thank them for it,” says Hvambsal. “[The idea is], let’s get it fixed so someone else doesn’t have the same issue.”
Often, as in the case of Liz, residents who post negative reviews or comments will edit them after managers reach out to them. But not every negative comment can be turned into a positive. “You can’t make everyone happy,” says Virginia Love, vice president of training and marketing for Chicago-based Waterton Residential, which manages more than 15,000 units in 12 states. “It’s not all going to be a basket of kittens.”
Addressing negative reviews almost always requires addressing the service problems that lead to bad reviews. “How do you know you’re giving great service?” asks Greg Lozinak, Waterton’s COO. To answer that question, Waterton surveys residents at four pivotal times: When leasing an apartment to a resident, when the new resident moves in, when the resident submits a service request, and when the lease comes up for renewal.
