Afterhours Emergency Services Management:
An Australian Real Estate management company, consisting of circa 2000 residential properties under management. On Tap Services currently conduct reactive and preventative plumbing and electrical maintenance across their Australian-based property portfolio, undertaking upwards of 150+ jobs per month.
Issue:
How to best manage their after-hours emergency plumbing maintenance, to avoid having their staff answer calls and deal with maintenance matters outside of standard business hours.
Development:
On Tap Services was asked to help assist with eliminating the need for staff to attend to after-hours emergency plumbing and electrical maintenance. On Tap Services had already been managing the direct maintenance requests from other Rental agencies, with great success and felt rolling our service out to 2000 + WA-based rentals was within our scope and capabilities.
Solution:
On Tap Services has an 1800 number that is monitored and attended to 24 hours, 7 days a week. We manage all inbound 5 pm-7 am enquires from Tenants, starting by identifying the client, the property address, the level of urgency and whether it falls within the parameters of emergency maintenance. If the task is determined an emergency, one of our 4 rostered technicians is contacted and engaged to attend. From there a job card is created and sent directly to our work orders email address to allow for our on-call Operations person to create the job in our system and ensure all correct site and safety procedures are followed. We have clear guidelines as to what is an emergency and what is not. At the earliest next business day, we then contact the client’s office to provide the details of works carried out and a purchase order is then raised to cover the required works.
Outcome:
By having On Tap Services carry out the initiation, qualification and deployment of any emergency maintenance tasks, our client is able to ensure their level of service is maintained, without the additional costs of providing their own staff to manage these inbound inquiries. And in addition, this has allowed their Property Portfolio Management staff a clear break from work, at the close of business each day. Which has contributed to greater staff retention and great job satisfaction and less burnout across their frontline staff.
Summary:
- Cost reduced of having to pay staff to attend to after hours – circa $25,000 per annum.
- Reduction in overtime hours of Property Manager staff of 39% over the first year.
- Reduced staff turnover and burnout over the first 12 months.