Keep them coming back to school: from hassle-free move-ins to business advice, the way housing providers manage relationships with their student residents from Day One can make renewals and referrals a cinch.

It's August and students are heading back to school. So now what do student housing managers do with them?

The way housing providers manage relationships with their student residents from "registration" day on will have a great impact on student retention for the rest of the students' college years--and will make renewals and referrals a cinch.

The Lease and Move-In

Begin the retention process from the moment students arrive to move in. This day should be part celebration of the students' arrival and part the business of renting their homes. Move-in day is always messy at a student community, so make the effort to alleviate problems with advanced planning.

Hire help. Learn some tricks from institutional student housing: Hire or recruit fraternity and sorority members to help direct traffic and unload "stuff" for move-ins. Clothe the crew in T-shirts that carry the community's welcome message and service theme. One 10-story student building actually has "elevator operators" for the two busiest weekends students move in so that a full elevator stops only on the floor on which it needs to unload, which speeds up the process.

Earn trust by laying the ground rules. Make the move-in process organized and informative and take the time to orient students and parents effectively. Review leases and policies with both and have both parties sign the documents. Many owners require each student to have a parent co-sign every student lease. This gives the owner financial protection and makes good business sense.

Echo Boomers or Generation Y, the terms for the current generation of college-aged adults, are generally typecast as cynical, so housing providers should be particularly careful to communicate clearly and honestly, to give students ample time to read and to ask questions and to inform them fully about policies and consequences. When parents see that the property management staff takes time to go over all pertinent information and stresses the responsibility placed on the student, parents feel more confident about where their money (and the students' money) is being invested.

Feed them. Granville Towers in Chapel Hill, N.C., serves a buffet for students and parents on move-in weekend. Another community has supplier-sponsored coffee, lemonade and cookies. Make sure to have a move-in gift. Whether the gift is nalgene bottles or T-shirts, have the community's name on them and a clever tagline that can serve as a marketing slogan for the community.

Information, please. Appoint a staff member during move in days to have no other responsibility than to smile, provide information and generally help students and their parents. Think of this person as a temporary concierge who is equipped with Internet access and knows how to use online maps to give instant directions, has a list of restaurants handy, knows where the closest Wal-Mart is, has a stash of campus maps and can help with any apartment problem that comes up on moving day. Call the staff member the "Expediter," and give that person authority to solve problems that arise during the course of the day. And because it is a tiring job, rotate the role among the most positive people on staff.

Roommate Mishaps

Whether a student rooms with her best friend or the staff matches two guys who appear on paper to be the most compatible pair on the planet, the first week of school will present staff with numerous instances of "irreconcilable differences" to be resolved.

Settle matters quickly. Letting roommates, or even forcing them, to work it out seems to be conventional wisdom. The majority of cases, however, can result in two unhappy students for an entire semester, broken leases, unhappy parents, perpetual discussions with staff and neither party renewing. And the fact is, the students usually associate their unhappiness with the actual housing provider rather than the roommate.

So act quickly to resolve the roommate dilemma. Have a joint discussion with the pair, and if the differences cannot be repaired quickly, do not hesitate to re-match the two. Delay gives the appearance of not caring, or perhaps not believing, and the problem inevitably gets worse.

Non-negotiable items. Roommate matching is difficult, but critical. Student housing providers should have roommate profile forms on which students can specify the non-negotiable roommate preferences, such as smoking or non-smoking. Beyond that, owners should attempt to match people with noise preferences, similar study habits and day-people versus night-people.

At one community, Joe, with help from his dad, rented a room by phone and selected a roommate plan. The property manager, Kenneth, asked that Joe send a roommate preferences profile with his application. After the semester began, Kenneth noticed that Joe, a music major who played the trombone, spent most of his afternoons and evenings after class camped out in one of the music practice rooms, but not always playing. About a week into the semester, Joe's dad called Kenneth, angry that Joe could not stand being in his room with his chain-smoker roommate. Kenneth remembered matching Joe and Sam, surprised that Joe was a smoker because Kenneth assumed music required good lungs. "Smoker!" his dad exclaimed. "Joe doesn't smoke!" Kenneth pulled Joe's file and found the resident preferences form, which showed a checked box indicating that Joe was a smoker. "Oh, no," his dad moaned. He had hurriedly completed the form while his son was out of town.

Roommate preference forms should clearly state that they must be completed by the student, and that they are submitted in confidence. In this case, the parent indicated the wrong preference, but students may also be hesitant to tell the whole truth on the forms if they think parents will see them.

High-tech matching. One service provider offers a student housing roommate matching product that allows students to pick their own roommates based on profiles they enter themselves online, similar to an Internet dating service. This places the responsibility back on the students, and while it doesn't eliminate disputes, it has been proven to reduce conflicts by putting the students in control of selecting their roommates.

Fast, Flawless Maintenance

Fix it fast. Student residents are the community's customers, just as in conventional apartment living, and customer satisfaction is a pivotal part of renewals. The service team's goals should be the same as those in other types of apartment communities. Student rooms should be made ready, cleaned and inspected prior to move-in, but as good as make-readies may be, inevitably some repairs will slip through the cracks. Students need to complete a move-in inspection report as part of lease paperwork, and repairs should be made as quickly as possible.

Prepare for crunch time. Because student move-ins all occur during one or two weeks of the year, all the move-in repairs will come in like a landslide. Be prepared with additional manpower to repair students' homes fast. And be prepared to communicate if repairs will be delayed. After repairs are completed, survey the students, in writing or by phone, to ensure the repair was completed to their satisfaction. This gives the opportunity for a second chance if the repair is not completed properly and reinforces the community's great service and responsiveness if it was repaired correctly the first time. Prompt repairs are always critical, but even more so at the beginning of the school year when they set the stage for a student's expectations for the year.

Make it easy. Throughout the school year, continue to provide quick repairs and remind students of the process of getting repairs completed. Make it as easy as possible. Offer an online method for the high-tech student population to request service, and implement an equally fast method to survey their satisfaction.

Future Leaders of America

Student housing providers have a unique opportunity. Their customers usually have little business experience but are usually adults of legal age to sign a contract. In fact, they are old enough to fight in a war, to vote in an election and sometimes to purchase alcohol. How owners interact with them is likely to help shape the way they interact in business in the future, as well as determine whether they view rental housing as good or bad.

Treat students with respect. Do not assume that "adult" employees will treat student residents with respect--it does not always happen. In fact, there are countless stories of students being taken advantage of at return of deposit or with a poorly explained rental term, being treated like children or other unnecessary miscommunications.

Know them by name. Require all employees to learn the residents' names and apartment numbers. One community that operates using student photo IDs gives spot bonuses at staff meetings for staff who can identify students' names and apartment numbers from their photos.

Do not compromise. Do not assume students know how to handle their business affairs yet. Be firm on collections, noise and other behavior complaints and establish a solid business relationship. Be 100 percent unforgiving of behavior issues, such as disturbing others, but in particular, take strong action against criminal and drug activity that could run off or frighten their neighbors and ruin the reputation of the community with other students, parents and school faculty.

At one community, Ricky fell behind on rent and did not respond to notices to pay. A change in property managers allowed him to fall through the cracks for an extra month. Before filing court papers, the new property manager, Jillian, asked Ricky to meet with her to discuss his rent. Ricky, a sophomore, slouched low in the chair and never looked the property manager in the eye. He adopted a "teenager" stance when asked about the rent, and responded with insolent one-syllable grunts.

Jillian took control and said, "Ricky, I assume you are in here because you are hoping I will not take legal action to evict you, right?" "Yeah," he responded, without looking up. "Ricky, if you want me to make some kind of exception for you," she said, "don't you think you should sit up straight in that chair, look me in the eye and clearly state what you want and just why you think I should give you more time?" Ricky looked up, sat straight in his chair and spoke clearly to the property manager. Jillian worked out a payment arrangement with Ricky, made a few calls to help him get an interview for a part-time position and coached him on appropriate dress and how to speak in his interviews. Ricky lived in Jillian's community until May 2006, when he graduated from college, having caught up on his rent and having become a great resident for his entire school tenure.

Build Community

Generation Y is social, and friends are so important that they can eclipse family relationships. Among the many characteristics attributed to Generation Y is variety of interests, and the apartment communities that attempt to placate residents with the two standard pool parties a year and a "kegger" at Christmas are missing an opportunity to become an indispensable part of the local college community.

Getting to know you. Start the semester by helping residents get to know one another. University Square in Greensboro, N.C., schedules several well-planned "mixers" on random days and times to help students get to know one another and to work around different class schedules. The mixers offer "must-be-present-to-win" prize drawings every 15 minutes with a grand prize at the end of the event, simple refreshments (alcohol-free) and sophisticated ice breakers that encourage residents to meet without embarrassment. Each fast-paced event is themed and ends on time, leaving the residents wishing there was a little more, instead of thinking, "When will this end!"

Market activities in a high-tech way. Have a calendar on the community. Web site and update it regularly. Include all available campus activities and dates, as well as community events, so students will use it as a viable schedule resource. Post signs, send e-mails, put a sandwich-board reminder at the community entrance and make sure residents and their friends know that "it's happening" at their community.

Better yet, go multi-modal. One service provider offers the latest in communication: multi-modal technology. With a mouse click, staff can send a message to residents, transmitting it to the student's cell phone, e-mail, instant messenger and the community's message board, all at once. So whether it is an invitation to a resident event, party reminder or announcement of a water line repair, management can communicate it to the high-tech Generation Y student population in an instant. If the event is limited in the number it can accommodate, the technology allows an RSVP, which then logs onto the apartment community's message board. The technology allows management to set up different groups, so it can also be used to e-market to prospective residents.

We are the world. Generation Y is willing to volunteer and is less self-centered than the preceding generation was stereotyped to be. Sponsor activities bigger than the community itself, such as fundraisers for disaster victims, gifts and letters to servicemembers overseas, blood drives and other activities, and invite the entire campus to attend.

Invite the faculty. University Square in Greensboro, N.C., offers its large conference room and lounge to faculty, which gives them the opportunity to take students out of the classroom. More than a change of venue, it is an opportunity for greater exposure to the community's housing, which creates a faculty referral system.

Give students something more. Offer activities that better students' lives and may be mutually beneficial. For example, invite representatives from the bank with which the community does business to teach classes on balancing checkbooks, managing finances and investment, and other classes that help students to make the transition to living on their own. In the spring semester, offer resume writing classes, job interviewing, job searching and other topics students want and that you can offer at no cost to the community or the students by using resources at the university or from the local community.

Different kinds of fun. Offer swimming lessons, dance lessons, knitting classes, self-defense classes, SCUBA diving, nutrition and cooking classes, investment clubs, art lessons, religious studies and craft classes, along with weekly movie nights, Monday Night Football and other more typical student offerings. Consider having daily morning coffee at the clubhouse, exam breaks, graduation parties and special activities for students who cannot go home during Thanksgiving, spring or winter breaks.

It is easy for staff to fall into a routine and to not recognize the need to make the student residents their "drop everything" priority. As with all apartment housing, the customer is most important, but with students, it can be even more important because for many of them this is the first significant amount of time they have spent away from home. Smiles, listening, remembering what is important to an individual student and asking about classes and grades all are simple but important. As with most customer service kindnesses, they are also good business.

BY MARY GWYN, CPM 

Mary Gwyn, CPM, is a Trainer, Speaker and Marketing Consultant with Apartment Dynamics. She can be reached at [e-mail] or 336/884-8845.