Tenant engagement and involvement require open communication, transparency, and accessibility. Although many property managers use email and text channels to inform and interact with their tenants, these aren’t the best ways to engage your facility’s tenants.
This blog will explain what tenant portals are and what features to look for.
What Is A Tenant Portal?
A tenant portal is a platform or channel dedicated to tenant communications. This includes completing various tasks involved in the tenant relationship, including handling:
- Announcements and updates
- Feedback and follow-ups
- Complaints, concerns, and issues
- Service providers
- Tenant issues and files
- Important documentation
- Key and access right management
It is a one-stop shop for all tenant issues, making it different from facilities management systems. A facility management system helps property managers take care of maintenance, lease management, repairs, and more.
While certain aspects of a facilities management system may overlap with a tenant portal, they are not the same. Facilities management systems are more complex and would be difficult for tenants to use.
Do You Need A Tenant Portal?
There are many reasons why your organisation may need a tenant portal. You need a tenant portal if you:
- Struggle to track communications with multiple tenants
- Don’t have a system to oversee complaints and issues
- Have no way to organise documents and information
- Receive complaints about your tenant experience
- Don’t have a separate, tenant-centric platform
A tenant portal helps you reduce the costs that come with a subpar tenant experience. Poor communication, accessibility, and issue resolution, all affect tenant satisfaction. On a greater level, this impacts tenant attention and retention, tenant longevity, your company’s reputation, and more.
3 Things To Look For In A Tenant Portal
1. Easy Communication Channels
Clear and transparent communication is the foundation of any good relationship, including the one you have with tenants. As clients and customers, your tenants want to know that they can get hold of you when necessary. Difficult communication can make or break tenants’ desires to stay with your company.
Make sure your tenant portal empowers communication by making it possible through different channels. Tenants should be able to access the portal on any device. It should also include text, email, and in-app options to communicate.
2. Document & Information Access
A key element of transparency is creating accessibility around important data and information. Tenants should be able to find important documentation pertaining to their rental agreement and the property.
They should have easy access to relevant updates, announcements, and other information that affects their facility use.
3. Feedback Systems
A final layer in facilitating good information exchange and improving your tenant experience is having a feedback system. Tenants must be able to share their concerns, queries, and general issues. The portal must support the property team in addressing these issues, tracking them, and providing feedback.
Final Thoughts
Using a tenant portal can transform how you oversee and nurture your tenant relationships. With a good tenant platform, you can centralise data, improve service, enhance communication, and much more. It could be just what you need to build long-lasting trust between you and your tenants.
If your organisation is looking for a 360° tenant involvement tool to involve all employees, service providers and external stakeholders to improve the quality of your operations, have a look at the 30-day free trial of the Falcony Platform:
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.
