It’s a busy 2016 for Team Umega. We’re watching with great interest as regulations tighten around our industry and we look forward to standards improving for landlords and tenants throughout Scotland. But, it’s not all about looking outward…there has been plenty work going on within Umega and here are the highlights.
Our expanding team
First and foremost….our fabulous Steve was 40 this month! Can you believe it?! (we can’t!). Steve’s an absolute rock at Umega and so a huge congratulations to our very own Buzz-Light-year; here’s to a great year ahead for the big fella! We’ve also had a couple of new additions to the team. Super-Davie’s in-house maintenance team has welcomed Jenifer, a SELECT and Gas Safe registered engineer. Jenifer is an absolute gem and we’re thrilled that she chose to join us. We were also joined in March by Michael who joined our front office team to help with the imminent summer surge of activity. Michael has fitted into the Umega team nicely and is doing a great job taking care of prospective tenants, filling our properties quickly and helping the team with record rent levels this year.
The Umega team continue to stretch and develop themselves. We continue to work hard with Investors in People and we’ve just set out our plans for the next year to ensure our team continue to develop and get the most out of their time at Umega. Communication of our vision and values remain a primary focus and this is supported by fortnightly training sessions and sharing and discussion of company financials and key metrics with all staff.
We’re growing
After the success of last year with 2 acquisitions we continue to grow our managed portfolio. We’re receiving more new landlord leads than ever which is a reflection of the high levels of customer service the team delivers. We continue to win the management of exceptional properties within The Quartermile development and we are one of the The Quatermile’s recommended letting agents which is a huge boost to the team. Our growth is not just restricted to The Quartermile; we’ve had an influx of student properties this year in advance of the August/September move-ins and we’ve managed to continue to grow our portfolio of properties throughout the city from Leith to Barnton as word spreads about the levels of service we deliver.
We added Rightmove to our portal roster in March and this has had a significant impact on the number of tenant leads we’re generating for each advertised property. Emma and her student-property team also did the rounds by attending the various University accommodation fairs to give us a head start in renting out our student properties this year. This was an overwhelming success and saw us rent out our student properties in record time at record rents. We’ve never felt so organised with our student properties so well done team!
Pushing our Customer Service levels higher
Our customer service levels continue to go from strength to strength, led by our mighty Bruce who pushes standards upwards. We recently added two innovative technology solutions; ‘Apply’ and ‘Appointed’ to our processes to raise our customer service standards. Through these innovations, tenants can book property viewing appointments and can apply for properties online (installing an ‘offers over’ type application process), improving the process of viewing and applying for our properties. We also continue to introduce UrHome, our online landlord portal to allow customers to keep an eye on their property finances and any property management 24 hours a day.
Customer Reviews and Feedback
We’ve been working hard to integrate feedback into our processes so that we know what our customers really think of us. We’re getting excellent, quick feedback from ‘Delighted’, a customer feedback tool. For the past month we’ve achieved 76% ‘promoter’ ratings (9/10 & 10/10) and 24% ‘passive’ ratings (7/10 & 8/10) which is a great illustration of the levels of service we offer (when a 7/10 rating is deemed to be ‘passive’ it shows how high our standards are aiming for 9/10 or 10/10 scores across the board!). We’ve also seen a continued rise in our online reviews with our Google review rating soaring to 4.3 stars (out of 5) and our AllAgents score sitting at an incredible 4.9 stars (out of 5) which is testament to the incredible job our team do. If you like what we do, please review us online…it means a great deal to us!
We’re bracing ourselves for the busy summer months but we feel well prepared for what’s ahead. We’re watching with interest as momentum grows in relation to the various tax and legislation changes facing our industry and we’ll be sure to keep you updated. There’s lots of work to be done as we continue to make progress this year in terms of what we offer landlords, our customer service levels and our influence in our sector. We’ll keep pushing our standards, and in turn our industry standards as we strive to raise the bar in our sector to ensure a safer, transparent private rented sector for landlords and tenants.