Take one look at the list of tickets that maintenance teams at multifamily communities commonly deal with and it is very easy to see just how many headaches they likely get. Two of those headaches that most teams would like to disappear? Simple, DIY tasks and preventable maintenance!

With over 12 years in maintenance, Ben Daniels, Service Supervisor at Watermark’s Jordan Creek Apartments, has consistently tried to streamline his teams’ processes by empowering residents to resolve simple tasks and instruct them on how to prevent the preventable.

“You’re always making lists for residents of things to do and not to do, and trying to guide them through things. Those never seem to catch on though. Residents are visual and want to see what you’re talking about.” – Ben Daniels, Service Supervisor

In 2018, the leasing team at Jordan Creek launched Realync’s video leasing platform and was overwhelmingly excited about the possibilities. One of those possibilities? Maintenance videos! Prior to joining Jordan Creek, Ben lived in LA and while his full-time job was maintenance supervisor, he also landed many acting gigs. Ben has been able to bring these talents to Jordan Creek where he now utilizes video as a maintenance team to streamline their processes like never before.

“I immediately loved the idea of using video for maintenance. People are visual. For maintenance, being able to actually show people what I’m talking about is so much more powerful than written lists or documents, and residents can grasp things much more clearly.” – Ben Daniels, Service Supervisor

The first video Ben’s team set out to create was an introductory video instructing residents on who the maintenance team was and how to submit their maintenance requests. Simple, but effective. This video put a face to the team, humanized the maintenance process, and laid the foundation for their team to flourish with video.

The team then created a list of the 10 most commonly dealt with issues and set out to create pre-recorded Realync videos covering those topics. The videos ranged from care tips for in-unit washers and dryers to garbage disposal best practices including what not to put down them and how to check the reset button on the bottom. They also created a video solely about how to turn on a tripped breaker.

These videos may seem basic or rudimentary, but many residents do not have a baseline understanding of what needs to be taken care of, what not to put down the drain, or that they even are allowed to open the breaker panel to fix a tripped breaker on their own. The results of these video efforts for Ben and the maintenance team at Jordan Creek were immediately visible. Since producing the videos and pro-actively and reactively sending them to residents, their team has received zero tickets to fix a tripped breaker and has significantly decreased the number of garbage disposal-related tickets as well! One resident even responded to receiving a maintenance video from the Jordan Creek team saying “I didn’t know I was allowed to do that on my own!”

Equipping and empowering residents with the knowledge and instruction to take care of the units that they live in is a clear step in the right direction when it comes to streamlining the hectic lives of the maintenance staff at multifamily communities. Ben and the Jordan Creek team experienced firsthand just how powerful and effective video can be in doing just that. The videos have also freed up his team’s time to work on the tickets and jobs that actually need the trained hand of a multifamily maintenance professional.

Ben had this to say about how his team continues to use the Realync platform: “Issues will pop up for our team and we now just take 10 minutes to record a solution video on Realync. We’re all fighting for time, but taking just a few minutes to record a video saves a lot of resources in the long run.”