Home About Services Inerro Technology Resources Blog Contact did you know... Blog How Many? How many emergencies will I get? A question we are asked quite often as prospective clients try to work out if our service is cost effective or attractive to them. Now this is a huge generalisation and is one overarching average for Lettings, Block, BtR, commercial, social etc. and portfolio’s of differing stock type, age and condition (plus our figures are over 10 years so smooth out variance over bad winter or unusual periods of activity). But, approximately, your out of hours service will receive; 0.085 emergencies per unit per month or .85 emergencies per 100 units per month or 8.5 emergencies per 1000 units per month (you get the idea) Actual call volumes is a different thing to consider; factor in 5x inbound (so 42 calls for our 1000 unit portfolio example) 4x outbound (34) We have previously advised the patterns of when calls come in so combine the two and you know what you are letting yourself in for and can make an informed decision. Contact us if you would like the figures in more detail or broken down by property types. Author Colin Stokes Posted on 4th March 2021 Our 12 Days of Christmas So a couple of days after our 12 Days ended reviewing the figures; Over 35,000 combined Inbound and Outbound calls and 3332 Emergencies The whole team have worked so hard completing over 4000 hours of overtime between them – working 10 long shifts over 12 days when most are with their families – huge effort from all of them to allow clients to close and re-charge over the holidays, we are now going to do the same. Author Colin Stokes Posted on 6th January 2021 We are running our annual competition, this year giving away £1000. Over the holiday season we provide not just the usual out of hours response but extra cover to allow our clients to shut fully or partially over the whole period. Companies begin this shut down on the 23rd December until returning on the 4th (our 12 Days of Christmas). Whoever can guess the closest to the total number of emergencies (not calls) we will log over those 12 days wins a donation in their name to the charity of their choice. Submit your guesses via https://www.linkedin.com/posts/colin-stokes-7b0a6a23_propertymanagement-12daysofchristmas-callcentre-activity-6737371234117541889-SgF9 (remembering we look after circa 600,000 block and lettings properties out of hours and approx. 60% for some of the whole period) and we will announce the winner in January. Author Colin Stokes Posted on 14th December 2020 Our September Statistics Author Colin Stokes Posted on 23rd October 2020 7 tips to deal with difficult calls We take our fair share of difficult calls here and so we thought we would share our top ways of dealing with them. Author Colin Stokes Posted on 15th October 2020 How to deal with major events? It’s been postmortem time as we review the recent brutal weekend storms Approximately a 250% uplift in calls (in some periods 400%) which meant that although we pulled almost every available staff member in we were at a staffing level of 175% (and everyone can do that math). This resulted in, at several points, real difficulty for some residents being able to get through and when they did, increased answering times from our usual average of sub 25 seconds to in excess, at points, of 20 minutes and this when our clients most need us. With weather patterns becoming more extreme this is now going from a once every 18 months occurrence to a twice a year one and leaves us with the question of how to provide the service for those 2 out of 52 weekends without just adding 200 staff in order to always be able to cope but therefore having to charge accordingly. Author Colin Stokes Posted on 9th October 2020 Customer Service Agent Abuse Whilst recently researching a piece on customer service and what we and others have to, on occasion, endure my colleagues provided some shocking examples It was probably made more so as they landed in my inbox in the space of 2 days and listening back to the calls was very uncomfortable to say the least; in their raw form they were not suitable for the article but we wanted to put the sentiments out there as it may add to the conversation as I have heard, and indeed read here, that things have worsened recently and this especially in regard to property management. We felt most suitable (?) way was the video below – the comments get more extreme as they go and although represent 1 in 2500 odd calls that is approx 4 a week to our contact centre and these are just recent examples and I left out many more. Author Colin Stokes Posted on 1st September 2020 36% 36% That’s the percentage of issues raised out of hours (based on 10+ years and over a million calls) that are actual emergencies. But if you are responsible for your out of hours service make sure those taking your calls have the time to serve the 64% just as much as the 36%. Why? Because to provide excellent customer service those “non-emergencies” (which the caller making the report almost certainly believes is urgent) need to be on an equal footing. It is quite easy to deal with most emergencies providing you have available resources, engineers and property expertise. It can, however, be a whole new and more difficult skillset to address why an issue does not warrant an immediate response. If this is not carried out suitably with enough empathy and understanding it can reflect poorly. To limit the number of total calls received you can also implement any of the following; 1. a sensible pre-connection notice to remind/advise callers are reaching the emergency line 2. multi-channel options like chat (AI and manned) 3. maintenance software that can accept requests and only pass to emergency staff on fulfilment of certain criteria 4. portal access with downloadable accounts/insurance etc Author Colin Stokes Posted on 19th August 2020 Contractor Requirements If you are responsible for your company’s property out of hours calls or maybe just procurement or contractor supply chain, what trades should you expect to need? Based on 65000 plus emergency calls last year over block and AST/BTR portfolios the following will give you an idea (in percentage terms so you can apply as applicable) of what types of engineers you will need to call on for all ad-hoc arising issues where instruction is required; 13% will require a plumber, it is unsurprising that this is the number 1 cause of call-outs. 4.75% an electrician. 4.5% locksmiths. 4% drainage specialists. 3% domestic gas engineers. For interest around 14.5% of all incoming calls will require lift engineers to attend, 6.75% access control specialists and 3% commercial boiler engineers although these were all covered by contracted companies. Oh, and you could, judging by last year, need an occasional snake wrangler but don’t spend too much time sourcing one of those as that need represented just 0.0015%. If you feel that the full rundown could assist you in your out of hours requirements please contact us as we are happy to share. Author Colin Stokes Posted on 7th July 2020 Procedures We have just finished the now quarterly review of our standard procedures for Out of Hours cover for Block, Lettings, Commercial and Warranty portfolios. We do this to ensure best median guidelines and then let our clients bespoke, as long as within current law, to reflect their business and approach. We are now at version 6.0 with over 100 different historical iterations as we stay up to date with new legislation and current best practice. Clients will be updated shortly but If anyone can benefit from a copy then you can download from the RESOURCES section of the this website. Author Colin Stokes Posted on 24th June 2020 Posts navigation PAGE 1 PAGE 2 … PAGE 4 NEXT PAGE Site Info About adiuvo adiuvo Data Protection adiuvo Privacy Statement Terms and Conditions Contact Adiuvo Suite 114, 22 Notting Hill Gate, London. W11 3JE. Call 0203 370 9332 By using this site, you agree to the adiuvo Privacy StatementOkRead