With the recent rise in remote work, apartment and condo buildings have more people in them from 9-5 than ever before. More residents in their apartment during hours that the unit would traditionally be empty has led to a new sensitivity around weekday noise and disruption. A robust digital guest engagement platform can ensure you are communicating in a way that is efficient for your team and convenient for your work-from-home residents.

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1. Interrupting Meetings

Knocking on a door or calling someone in the middle of their work day could inadvertently interrupt an important work call. It’s far more courteous to send a quick text that doesn’t cause a device to ring or a dog to start barking like crazy. 

Even more importantly, someone can easily read a text notification in a few seconds and determine if your request or question is urgent, even while in a meeting. If it’s important, they can choose to excuse themselves. If it can wait, they’ll get back to you as soon as they are free.

2. Avoiding Phone Tag

Does anyone even know how to navigate the screen that pops up when you have a call waiting? End and accept? Hold and accept? Send to voicemail? Chances are if you call someone when they are already on the phone for work, your call is going to get ignored—especially if the number isn’t stored in the resident’s phone. 

If you’re lucky, the resident will listen to your voicemail and call you back when their other call is over, and if you’re really lucky you won’t be on another call when they call you back. More likely, the phone tag will go on for most of the afternoon. Instead of this undesirable situation, shoot over a quick text; residents will read the text sooner than listening to a voicemail and can respond back to you easily, even if they are still on the other line. 

3. No missed emails

Giving a resident a heads up about an upcoming fire alarm? Notifying them of some construction that might be happening above their unit? If a resident works from home, messages around possible noise or interruptions are key to their day. Make sure essential information is sent directly to a resident’s phone so it can be seen, instead of buried in an inbox of promotions from their favorite clothing store and reminders to return their library books.

4. Silent Entry

When maintenance needs to enter a unit of a resident who works from home, coordinating through text can be far less intrusive than cold knocking or even calling beforehand. A quick text to say “We’re planning to come fix your sink at 3pm. Does that time work for you?” allows a resident to say “Sure, but I’ll be on a call. Just knock and come in so I don’t have to leave my meeting to get the door!”

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These are just some of the key reasons resident messaging is the best route for work-from-home residents. Learn more about resident texting today or schedule a conversation with our team.

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