Moving across the country for a new job with one’s family can be a stressful and sometimes chaotic experience, but ABODA, Redmond’s corporate housing firm and one of the industry’s largest, launches a new communication platform to help make its guests “feel right at home.”
Called ABODAcontact, this high-tech, cloud-based communications platform provides phone, email and now text-messaging (SMS) capabilities to connect relocating executive employees directly to ABODA’s top-rated Global Client Services Center. It’s a vital new service ABODA management says to help these executives who work for some of the nation’s largest brands — and their families — enjoy a smoother transition in moving to a new area, such as Seattle or other major markets ABODA serves across the U.S. and globally.
“We want ABODA guests to feel right at home from the minute they open the door to their new home,” says Lee Curtis, president of ABODA. “ABODAcontact can help us do that even better as it gives us a real-time view of what our guests need during their stay, and most importantly, it allows our guests to engage with us so we can respond quickly to their immediate needs.”
Curtis believes the ABODAcontact texting module will have the most significant impact, fostering an immediate two-way dialogue to address urgent guests’ requests and gain more insight into any concerns.
“If a travel schedule changes and a guest needs an early departure or to extend their stay, they can get an instant response from our 24/7 Global Client Services Center, known for its exceptional service,” Lee explains.
“We text guests on move-in day and to learn about their experience,” he added. “We will text a reminder about housekeeping, stay in touch through text about their planned departure date and at the end of their stay, we offer a simple survey via text to assess how well we did.”
Curtis notes that the immediacy of text compared to email is striking: the open rate for a text message exceeds 98 percent, according to a SinglePoint study and research by the Radicati Group. More remarkably is how effective a text is at creating urgency: 90 percent of all text messages are read within three minutes of being received on a mobile phone, researchers say. In contrast, for the real estate industry, only 22 percent of all email is ever read, according to research from email firm Silverpop.
The data that ABODAcontact collects is compiled within its custom programmed Microsoft Dynamics CRM system and ABODAinsightSM, ABODA’s business analytics powered by Microsoft Power BI. This allows the ABODA Service Committee to perform in-depth analysis and reviews on a monthly basis. The company’s Service Committee includes the Senior Executive team as well as department heads. Curtis notes that ABODA uses a “Top Block” service analysis to ensure accountability for service quality, which has been the “cornerstone of ABODA’s well-earned reputation as our industry’s leader in customer service excellence.”
