The Self-Storage Call Center: Part of Competitive Management

This may come as no surprise, but the self-storage business is becoming more competitive every day. Latest figures show that the average self-storage market has eight facilities. This means that in any average market, seven other competitors are vying for your business. In this kind of atmosphere, smart owners are continually in search of new ways to ensure success.

Certainly one of the ways to keep ahead of your competition is to offer more and better services. One service gaining the attention of owners who are looking for an edge is a call center. Let’s face it, if you do an excellent job of marketing your facility, you should expect the phone to ring, right? But suppose when it rings, there’s no one there to answer but voicemail? It’s not a good solution.

All of us know that tenants and prospects have little patience. If they don’t get an answer from a live human being, the tenant will likely go away frustrated, and the prospect will go on to one of your competitors.

This is not a good situation if your advertising dollars are building awareness for your facility and prompting the phone to ring. If you can’t get the customer through the door and get a rental agreement signed, your marketing dollars are being wasted.

With the advent of cell-phone technology, you may have doubts about the need for a call center. After all, wouldn’t a good manager have a cell phone to answer any call, anytime? Sure, some managers use cell phones to make sure they have the ability to answer calls while onsite showing units. This is fine, but put yourself in the place of the manager or the prospect. Should any transaction be interrupted to take a call? And what about a prospect or tenant who calls the manager’s cell number only to get a busy signal?