Having insight into what residents and prospects are sharing about Essex communities can help us better serve our customers. At Essex, our Marketing team supports reputation management in partnership with Operations. To understand our reputation management program and what is expected of on-site teams, please review the below Talking Points.

What is reputation management?

• Reputation management refers to the influencing of an individual's or group's reputation.
• For Essex, prospects and residents may post reviews to online review websites such as Yelp, Google and Facebook.

 How does Essex support reputation management?

• In partnership with Operations, Marketing supports our reputation management program.
• There are two main components to this program
  1. Reputation monitoring and reporting through the Chatmeter platform (launching soon).
  2. Publicly responding to reviews with support of our Essex communications team

Why is it important to respond to online reviews?

• Increase leads to leases by improving Google rankings. The more a business responds to reviews, the higher it will rank in local Google searches. By boosting your Google rank, this means you can turn these leads into leases.
• Show customers we care. By publicly addressing all feedback, we reinforce our respect for prospects and residents.
• Provides a competitive edge.
  • When apartment searching, prospective residents reference online reviews, often before they even contact us.
  • Research indicates that negative online reviews can significantly reduce traffic.
  • A prospect who encounters negative reviews about your community may be so dissuaded that they will not even contact you – you may never even have the chance to explain the reviews and why your community is a terrific place to call home.

How does the reputation management program work?

• All feedback in one place. Chatmeter aggregates data from online review sites and Kingsley surveys, making it easy to review all feedback data and trends in one place.
• Communities should review regularly. Community managers should regularly log in to Chatmeter to review the latest customer feedback data and trends.
  • For example, a positive trend in comments on maintenance staff confirms that your team is doing a great job with maintenance requests.
  • As another example, several negative reviews regarding overflowing trash alerts you that this is an area to address.
• Responding to reviews. It is Essex policy to publicly respond to all online reviews, whether they are positive or negative. In partnership with the Essex communications team, community managers provide details to craft a friendly, customer-oriented response in a timely fashion.

What is the customer response escalation process?

• As stated above, it is Essex policy to publicly respond to all online reviews in a timely manner.
• Effective immediately, our new standard is to respond to a review within 1-2 days.
• We have implemented this new standard as it better demonstrates our commitment to operational excellence and our customers.

 
How does the customer response escalation process work?

• Day 1 – A review is posted by a customer. Chatmeter automatically sends a notification email sent to the Community Manager. The community manager should immediately begin working with the communications team to craft and publicly post the response within the same business day.
• Day 2 – If no response has been publicly posted, the Community Manager will receive a reminder email.
• Day 3 – If a response still has not been publicly posted, the Regional Portfolio Manager is notified via email.
• Day 5 – If a response still has not been publicly posted, the Division Manager is notified via email.
• Day 7 – As our standard is to respond to a review within seven days, the CM, RPM, and DM all receive a notification email to indicate the urgency of closing this task.

What can on-site teams do to support reputation management?

• One E-Team. While the escalation process involves CMs, RPMs, and DMs, the entire on-site team makes an impact on the community’s online reputation. All associates should provide excellent customer service to residents and prospects at all times.
• Request reviews. While you never know if a customer will post a review, you can be proactive and politely ask satisfied customers to leave a review on Yelp, for example.

Questions?

• Please contact marketing@essex.com