Triple Win Property Management Blog | Second Nature

Why Client Customer Service is Key to Brand Perception

Written by Tony Cline | Feb 20, 2025 2:15:00 PM

Tony Cline has over 20 years of experience in property management. After purchasing a real estate and property management brokerage in Denver, Colorado, he spent more than two decades as managing broker. Today he's focused full time on his work as a Property Management Success Coach. Tony is a Second Nature Triple Win Mentor.

Your brand is the way that your audience thinks and feels about you. In this industry, one of the most effective ways to shape those thoughts and feelings is through your property management customer service.

Your job is to decide who you’re serving and how, and then to do that in the best way possible. When you emphasize your quality of service and expertise, you can build a strong brand to set you apart from the competition.

Leaning into your authority

I firmly believe that you can’t deliver great service unless you lead from a position of authority. When someone hires you as a property manager, they’re giving you jurisdiction to make decisions on their behalf. They’re hiring you because you have a level of expertise and experience that they don’t. Part of your job—and I’d consider it a core responsibility, if not a full-fledged obligation—is to confidently step into that role of expert.

When you take on a new client, you have to ask yourself, “do I want to be a high-level, functioning fiduciary, or do I want to take instructions and run errands?”

You don’t go to the doctor and tell them what tests to run, what medicine to prescribe, and how to diagnose you. That’s because you’re the patient, and you’re asking them to lend their expertise and advise you.

Great customer service isn’t just about doing what you’re asked. It’s about knowing what should and shouldn’t be done in the first place.

As a property manager, you need to be confident in your ability to solve the problems in front of you, and to create systems that solve those problems both proactively and reactively.

Define what problems you’re solving

The truth is, you can’t have expertise and authority if you don’t know what specific problems you’re solving. And before you can truly identify the problems you’re solving, you first need to identify whose problems you’re solving. Different client types have different problems and different definitions of what good service means. That means that identifying your target client profile is an essential first step to providing quality service.

It’s important to realize that you can’t be all things to all people and provide top-tier service to all of them. A jack of all trades is a master of none, so focus on what you’re truly good at and who you can best serve. There’s nothing wrong with that.

If you walk into Cava or Garbanzo and ask for a burrito, they’ll probably tell you you’re in the wrong place. They might have some of the ingredients to cobble together a burrito, but it’s not going to be Chipotle, and it doesn’t make sense to try. The thing is, you know that before you walk in the door, because Garbanzo and Cava advertise themselves as Mediterranean, not Mexican. You have to do the same thing with your business.

Garbanzo isn’t trying to sell to people who are looking for burritos, they’re selling to people who want high quality mediterranean bowls and pitas.

Decide who your audience is and learn what their biggest problems are. Then you can start to get very specific about your area of service and tune out the rest of the noise.

Using pricing as a behavioral correction & setting boundaries

Setting boundaries is a core part of property management. Part of that is being able to tell your clients what services you do and don’t offer, and why. Remember, you’re the expert, so you get to define what your services are.

From time to time you’ll run into a client who feels very strongly about having a particular service done, even though it’s outside of your standard offering. That’s when I suggest using pricing as what I call “behavioral connection.” Basically, you can either say “no,” or you can say, “yes, but it’s going to cost you.”

By pricing special services at a very high rate, you actually help your clients realize what they truly value and what’s really a priority. It discourages them from insisting on service that, in your expert opinion, isn’t valuable. It also trains clients on what their relationship with you is going to be.

You have to be willing and able to tell your investors no, because their actions and the things they request of you can undermine your ability to provide the important services effectively.

Communication is key to property management customer service

Communication is one of the core parts of your service offering. Being able to answer your investors’ questions, and prevent questions by proactively giving them the right information, is key.

Communicating too little

Early in my career, I used to only call property owners if something really bad happened. Basically, unless something exceeded the authorization amount I had already been given, I didn’t consult them, I just acted, and I had no check-ins or updates in between.

I didn't want to involve them in every little detail, because that can quickly lead to co-managing a property with them. And, as I already outlined, you want to be the authority rather than just an order taker.

The problem with this approach was that it didn’t allow for transparency. As a result, a lot of my clients didn’t actually see the work that I was doing or the value that it was bridging. So when it was time to renew our management contract, a lot of them were asking what they were paying me for if managing their property was “so easy.”

Communicating too much

As my business matured and I learned some of those harsh lessons, I started to lean on technology and automation a lot more. Instant notifications let my owners know when maintenance requests came in, when rent was paid, and everything in between.

The problem then became overcommunication. My clients were getting more than they actually wanted.

The vast majority of landlords already expect and assume that rent will be paid on the first of the month. They don’t need to be notified every time it happens. And they definitely don’t need to get notifications about leaky faucets or squeaky hinges. That’s just going to make them concerned that you’re not doing your job.

Automation tools definitely have their place in property management, but overcommunicating can be damaging. The more you involve your client in real-time decision making, the lower the quality of service you can provide, because you’ve given up your position of authority.

Finding the balance

The big challenge is learning what types of issues are worth communicating about, and which should just be handled without consulting your investors.

My team sat down and looked at the full resident lifecycle to figure out all of the touchpoints where communication is critical. It turns out, the places where communication is most important are the ones that have a lot of emotion attached to them; expensive appliance replacements, evictions, lease turnovers, etc.

Whatever touchpoints you decide are important to communicate, make sure that you set expectations up front. Your clients should know when they’ll be getting notified and what kinds of updates are worth reaching out about.

When in doubt, focus on making statements rather than asking questions.

Exercise your authority as part of your brand

As I said at the start of this article, your brand is how you’re perceived. That means that your brand is:

  • Whether you’re trusted to make smart decisions
  • Whether you’re seen as an expert
  • Whether your level of service is considered valuable
  • Whether you’re looked at as an authority on management

Your brand is every interaction that your clients have with you. Every time you make the decision to go beyond your authorized spending amount—because that’s what you need to do to deliver a superior level of service—that’s impacting how your owners view you.

On the flip side, every time you ask an owner’s approval for something they think is trivial, that’s negatively impacting your brand.

If you lean into your expertise and authority, you can deliver superior service and show clients and potential clients that you’re smart, dedicated, and trustworthy.

Lean on public communications

To build your brand publicly, start creating content that shows your expertise and the value that you deliver.

Use videos, blog articles, newsletters, and social media to tell the stories of the problems you’re solving behind the scenes. Show your clients that, even if they aren’t hearing about it, you’re doing important work for someone in your portfolio each and every day.

Make sure that the value you’re highlighting across channels focuses specifically on your target client profile. Your goal is to illustrate that you have expertise in the challenges faced by your chosen audience. That’s how you build a true brand that resonates with your clients.


Interested in learning more about developing your property management brand? Watch our on-demand webinar on developing a brand positioning statement.