The battle for leaseholders’ hearts & minds

When Colonel Tim Collins addressed the 1st Battalion of the Royal Irish Regiment, poised just south of the Iraqi border, his message was one of respect. Respect your enemy and you will succeed, be ferocious in battle but magnanimous in victory, and allow them dignity in death. This was the start of the war of “Hearts & Minds”.

I’m not suggesting that standing in the Kuwaiti desert on the eve of a war bears any similarity to the role of an Estates Manager. However, in our industry, the essence of hearts and minds can be translated to customer empathy, and ultimately a positive customer service experience.

Many of you will have hundreds or possibly thousands of individual leaseholders. These leaseholders will presumably know who you are, or at least your name; but do you know who they are? “How can I?” You may ask. “There are too many of them?!” Well do you know what they want? “Of course; they want clean windows; clean corridors, clean stairwells; they want a garden area that is tended to every couple of weeks.”

The management of residential property involves stepping over a boundary into somebody else’s territory. A war zone?! - Hopefully not. All the same it is a home, or investment, that your leaseholder, client, customer, has taken the decision to purchase and call their own.

The fact that your actions can affect this property so greatly puts you in the firing line should decisions you have made, or have been made for you, not turn out as anticipated. It is at this point your ability to empathise with your client is crucial.

How do my actions, or inactions, come across to my clients? A simple concept; however not one that is always at the forefront of an Estate Manager’s mind. Yet, there will always be “human error”. No one is 100% perfect, 100% of the time.

When you make a mistake that impacts your leaseholders is it, “the final straw”, or is it a small blemish on an otherwise trouble free relationship? Ultimately, having the best interests of the property owners as your “raison d’être”, must surely make the latter a more achievable outcome.

As the attitudes of the commanding officers have changed; so to have those of the business leaders. No longer are clients just reference numbers. If you are made to feel like that, then the inevitable solution is a change in service provider. This attitude does not have to be based on a “yes man” mentality. Whether agreeing or disagreeing with your client(s); having respect for them and offering them the transparency that they should be offered should ultimately help them respect you, and your position.

If such a message of respect can be applied to a foe on the eve of battle, then surely it can be applied in the relative peace of leasehold property management.

Mathew Tute AIRPM is an Estates Manager with Premier Estates Limited