When good service gets noticed.

This blog is intended as a personal kind of thing rather than promoting our business but on this ocassion but I wanted to mention something relevant in these current economic times to prove that good service counts - even when  good service in question is ours!

We put our prices up by 1% to all our landlords who's properties we manage.  It's the first price increase since we commenced trading and naturally in the current climate we were nervous about putting prices up, no-one likes putting prices up but we felt we were justified in doing so as like any business we have had increased costs oursleves.

So with some trepidation I started to compose a price increase letter.  I was used to doing these in my former industry when our aluminium suppliers and glass manufacturers would without fail put their prices up to us every year.  That was an easy letter as most of our customers also dealt with glass and aluminium suppliers so were used to it. 

As I typed and erased sentences and then typed and erased some more trying to make putting prices up sound like a positive thing, I thought....hold on! It is a positive thing.  Hold on a second you landlords.  The vast majority of you since we started working with you have never had a void period, have got excellent tenants, get your rent paid on time and in short dont have to worry.  Then I got to thinking that what we charge is what we charge and no more.  No hidden extras, no supplementary charges, other than routine maintenance etc.

Then Mike and I talked about the investment we have made.  Our lettings software is probably the best in the business, the mutts nutts as some would say. This and other things made me realise that you have to have confidence in what you do and if you believe something is right, then fight your corner.

So out went the letter with new management agreements.  In the post, first class.  Slowly slowly the signed agreements start coming back to us in the post.................its been three weeks since they went out and you know what?

Not one single customer has complained about the price increase! 

Posted via web from thelettingagent's posterous