Virginia Beach, VA– The annual Tenant Satisfaction Survey (TSS), conducted by CEL & Associates and released by the Department of Defence (DoD), serves as an outlet for military families to express their satisfaction with living in military housing. The survey focuses on three areas of satisfaction - overall, property, and service satisfaction. It is conducted by CEL & Associates and distributed to military families living in Public-Private Venture (PPV) housing. Together with the DoD and the Department of the Navy, Lincoln Military Housing (LMH) reviews TSS feedback to help identify issues, implement corrective actions, and measure satisfaction.
At the Bradford Cove neighborhood of LMH’s Hampton Roads’ Mid-Atlantic District, scores increased significantly. Bradford Cove serves junior and field grade officers along with warrant officers. The neighborhood saw an increase in all three areas of resident satisfaction. The overall community scores jumped from 71.3 in 2019 to 77.1 in 2020, increasing 5.8 points. Property satisfaction increased from 78.0 to 82.4. Finally, service satisfaction rose from 64.6 in 2019 to 71.0 in 2020, increasing 6.4 points.
“COVID put a strain on all of our resident interaction, so we had to find a new norm,” said Daryll Hannah Guzman, District Manager at Bradford Cove. “One thing I discovered was that residents wanted more communication. So we spent a lot of time working on ways to improve that,” said Daryll Hannah Guzman, District Manager of Bradford Cove.
Guzman and her team set out to create open channels of communication and recreate resident expectations. To facilitate these changes, Guzman assigned senior maintenance technicians to the Bradford Cove neighborhood.
“I appointed two of my techs to go to the neighborhood so the residents see a familiar face instead of someone new each time. The residents really appreciated it and we’ve kept moving forward with it,” said Guzman. In addition to hiring a new Service Coordinator who has helped “tremendously” with increasing communication and touching base with residents to make sure they’re satisfied, Guzman and her team are planning to roll out additional initiatives.
“Now that we know this works [for our residents], we’re planning to replicate it in other areas. This is all about giving military families a sense of stability that they might not be used to. The next step is to assign dedicated customer service representatives to the neighborhood, said Guzman.
Shifting pandemic conditions made it difficult to interact with residents during 2020, but not impossible. So Guzman and her team created an internal office dashboard only available to LMH team members. The dashboard helps the team follow up with move-ins, work orders, and other resident touchpoints. The result has been that residents see more open communication and transparency.
“We have a dashboard for major projects so it’s all in one location. So if a resident calls, we have the information on hand. That’s helped raise resident expectations and trust, especially during COVID,” said Guzman. Guzman said she and her team are looking forward to exceeding resident expectations during the remainder of this year and will continue to raise the bar on resident experiences.
About Lincoln Military Housing
Lincoln Military Housing (LMH) was formed in 2001 through a Department of Defense (DOD) contract with parent company Lincoln Property Company. The goal has always been to increase the quality of military housing for our nation's servicemen and women. Since its inception more than a decade ago, Lincoln Military Housing now provides more than 36,000 family homes for military members across the US. Lincoln is much more than a property management company. LMH acts as a support system for military families and offers community-building activities and 24-hour maintenance assistance programs, free, to all of their residents. Services are available for members of all branches of service -- Marine Corps, Army, Navy, Air Force, United States Coast Guard, and National Guard. For more information about Lincoln Military Housing, please visit www.livelmh.com for more information.
