Decreasing the Load on Manual Service Support by Improving the Confirmation Process in a Web-based Issue Reporting System

Sammanfattning: There is currently a digital revolution in the real estate industry. Property technology, or PropTech is seeing new startups emerge in a rapid rate. The management of real estate assets is an area that PropTech is currently digitalizing, and part of it is facilitating tenant communication and property maintenance. This includes the digitalization of the existing process of issue reporting for tenants and the subsequent delegation of property caretakers to issues. A part of successfully digitalizing the issue reporting process is decreasing the amount of phone calls and email to the service reception, and instead diverting traffic to the web-based issue reporting service. A startup providing such services has identified that a considerable amount of communication to the service reception is concerning ongoing issue reports. This was recognized even with issues that were reported digitally, tenants make follow- up correspondence about an issue they have reported. An exploratory research study was therefore conducted to discover why and when tenants inquire about an ongoing issue, and to determine in what ways a confirmation process of a web- based issue reporting service can be developed, such that it appeases tenants’ concerns about their ongoing issue report. The results of the study show that tenants make a follow-up inquiry about their issues when the following factors are not met: expectation, transparency in communication, and assurance. These same factors should be considered in designing a confirmation process. A web-based issue reporting service should have a confirmation process that meets the tenant’s expectations on how their issues should be addressed, allow property managers to be transparent to their tenants in order to frame said expectations, and provide adequate assurance to the tenants that their issue report has been received by a service representative.