It can be easy for commercial property owners or managers to push communication responsibilities onto their tenants. In these commercial real estate markets, however, owners and management should be doing all they can to improve their tenant's experience. This includes meeting their communication responsibilities.
Communication Responsibilities Of Tenants In Commercial Property
Commercial tenants are not free from any communication responsibilities. They are responsible for alerting their landlords to any issues that arise. The landlord can not reasonably be expected to know about these issues without tenant feedback.
Tenants must also be reachable. If their landlord tries to communicate with them, it’s their responsibility to respond so that issues can be resolved effectively.
Communication Responsibilities Of The Owner In Commercial Properties
Owners or landlords of commercial properties have various responsibilities when it comes to communicating with their tenants.
First, they need to provide their tenants with all the information necessary for their occupation of the premises.
Second, owners need to make it easy for tenants to reach them. They should provide them with all the different ways a tenant can contact them. Moreover, they must be receptive and responsive to tenants trying to reach out to them.
Lastly, it’s the responsibility of the property owner to periodically check in with their tenants. This way, they can ensure that the tenants are satisfied with the property.
Why Does The Responsibility Of Communication Get Pushed To Tenants?
Commercial tenants are the ones occupying the premises. If there is a lack of communication, this negatively impacts their tenant experience.
If they are not told important information about the property and that they need to conduct certain affairs, it will directly impact them. If there is a breakdown in communication about maintenance issues, it is the tenant that will experience the leaky roof or broken gate.
This makes it easy for owners to push the responsibility of communication onto their tenants. The property manager or owner does not feel the need to check in regularly with tenants. Instead, they wait for the tenants to get in touch with them (which is often difficult for tenants to do).
When Should Tenants & Property Managers Communicate
As the property, you should be the one to establish and facilitate good communication with tenants. But when should you communicate?
It’s important to communicate with your tenants when any changes happen to the property that will affect them. For example, this can include if renovations or repairs are taking place or if new systems are being installed. Keep your tenants up to date with these types of announcements.
In doing so, you can minimise the number of things that tenants may want to contact you about. They will be in the know about what’s happening around the property and can therefore just communicate when they need to report something you may be unaware of.
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Final Thoughts
If you are an owner or a property management company looking to improve your communication with tenants, hire a tenant experience manager and implement a communication platform.
A tenant experience manager will focus on communicating with tenants regularly and improving tenant satisfaction. In addition, an effective communication platform will make it easy for tenants to report problems and see timely resolutions and updates. This will improve tenant involvement and experience, resulting in loyal tenants.
If your organisation is looking for a 360° tenant experience tool to involve all employees, service providers and tenants to improve the quality of your operations, have a look at our 30-day free trial:
We are building the world's first operational involvement platform. Our mission is to make the process of finding, sharing, fixing and learning from issues and observations as easy as thinking about them and as rewarding as being remembered for them.
By doing this, we are making work more meaningful for all parties involved.
More information at falcony.io.
