Condo Media - January 2015 - 27

Property Management Corp., instructs
his answering service to text and call
managers. If the on-call manager
doesn't answer or text immediately
acknowledging receipt of the message,
the operator waits 15 minutes and then
tries once more before going to the next
manager on the list.
Peter Westhaver, CMCA, AMS,
PCAM, vice president and director
of business development at The Niles
Company Inc., AMO, instructs his
answering service to delay reporting
a "trouble" call (when a fire alarm
sounds, for example) until the fire
department has assessed it. If the
department dispatches a truck, the
manager is notified; if the department
"clears the code," determining that no
emergency exists, the manager will get
the report the next day.
CREATING A BUFFER
An answering service doesn't eliminate
midnight calls to managers. "It doesn't
get them out of the line of fire," McGowan notes. "Managers on call are
still on call." But the screening process
does reduce unnecessary calls because
only true emergencies are relayed. The
answering service also creates what McGowan terms "a timeline buffer," giving
managers time to gather their thoughts
and possibly initiate a response before
responding to a call. And because the
operator collects basic information,
the manager doesn't have to waste time
quizzing the owner for details.
This is another advantage of getting
a detailed message from an operator
rather than a voice message or a text
from the owner, which may contain
little more than the caller's name and
phone number, with no indication of
where he or she lives (an obvious problem for portfolio managers responsible
for multiple properties) and little, if any,
info about the emergency.
Owners expect managers to know
everything when they return an emergency call, Westhaver observes. An
answering service can help ensure that
is the case. With the answering service

fielding and responding to calls, the
manager can concentrate on dealing
with the problem.
Another major benefit of an answering service is the ability of operators
to convey information to multiple
owners calling about the same problem,
informing them the issue has been
reported to the manager and updating
them on the response - for example,
that a plumber is now on site dealing
with the broken pipe.
Many companies have the ability to
send blast emails or texts to owners
providing information on the status of
an emergency repair, McGowan notes,
"but you can't be certain owners will be
checking their email or phones in the
middle of the night."
"The answering service can make
sure that owners know what we know
and know what we are doing," Dannin
agrees.
HANDLING EMERGENCIES
Sometimes operators do more than simply report an emergency - they actually help deal with it. Fielding a late-night
call from an owner stuck in a stalled elevator at one of Dannin's properties, the
operator connected the panicky caller
directly with the manager, who kept her
on the line to provide reassurance until
the repair service arrived. Responding
to another stalled elevator call, Dannin
recalls, the operator herself stayed on
the line, keeping the owner calm until
the manager responded.
Deciding whether a situation rises to
the level of an emergency is an answering service's most important task. Not
all situations that owners report as
emergencies meet that definition, and
answering services are instructed to
know the difference between situations
that must be reported immediately and
those that can wait. Fires, floods, gas
leaks, and loss of power clearly represent emergencies; complaints about a
broken light or leaves in the lobby do
not. But the distinctions aren't always
that clear. For example, some managers
say they would consider the loss of heat

an emergency in a high rise but not necessarily in a townhouse where only one
owner is affected. But if the occupant of
that townhouse is seriously ill, an emergency response might be indicated.
There is also the question of perception: If the emergency sounds more
like a minor inconvenience to the operator, he or she would tell the owner

You want to know
what the operators
sound like. How do
they relate to clients
when they call? You
also want to know how
services train their
operators and what
professional standards
they enforce.
-Peter Westhaver,
CMCA, AMS, PCAM
the problem will be reported in the
morning. But if the owner still insists
on talking to the manager, "we're not
going to stonewall," Westhaver says.
"We tell the service to put the call
through."
Management companies typically give
their answering services limited discretion to provide basic information and
to deal with what Dannin terms "nonemergency emergencies." For example,
his service has contact information for
the towing company it uses, which the
operator can relay to an owner whose
car has been towed after hours.
But most managers, including Dannin, agree with McGowan that "it is
best to err on the conservative side" and
limit the information answering services can provide and the questions they
can answer. An operator may be able

january 2015

Condo Media - January 2015

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Condo Media - January 2015