Is your storage facility a side business for you? Do you own another business or have a full time job? If this is the case it is probably pretty difficult to keep up on managing your facility properly and answering every phone call. Many storage facilities also feel like they have a pretty good handle on their phone calls, but when in reality storage industry statistics show that 1 out of every 3 calls to a storage facility are missed. That means you miss payments, new rentals, customer service problems, and much more. So if you want to avoid this, what are your options?
Your Options
- Hiring a full time manager is always an option but even at a low hourly rate it can be a large monthly expense. If you own a smaller facility there also may not be enough work to keep a full time (or even part time) manager busy.
- Something you could consider is hiring a 3rd party answering service or management company. They can answer the phone calls for your facility and process rentals, payments, and assist tenants with questions. Some companies can even help with onsite issues, however they are usually much more expensive. If you go with a remote answering service you can save money and they can handle the majority of day to day issues.
One thing to keep in mind when looking at different options is to see how much more effective it is to use a company that can access your management software. This way they can process the payments and keep the system up to date. If you use a company that only takes messages and forwards them on to you it's not as beneficial.
You may initially look at hiring an answering service as a cost, however you will notice that your occupancy will go up and your past due collections will go down. Your perspective will change and the service ends up more than paying for itself.
Stay tuned for more from Easy Storage Solutions about the benefits of utilizing a call answering service or management service to run your facility. If you are interested in learning more about our own call answering and management service, Click Here!
