“Smart technology gets outdated by
the time we install some of it.”
- Troy Boyd
they did in the 80’ and 90’s. We were doing
everything. I was doing boiler repairs.
Advanced boiler repairs and I was doing
rebuilding mechanical rooms and stuff
like that as a maintenance guy. That is not
possible anymore because of liabilities and
skill level of our work force.
Chris: We have to focus a lot on liability
and where that leads us and we rely on
vendors with licenses and that extra
liability umbrella to protect us from those
mistakes should they happen.
AAMD: Dean, as the only supplier in
the room, how have you seen the evolution
of, or has their been an evolution of how
suppliers work with maintenance teams and
supervisors over the years?
Dean Trujilo: Like Chris said, everybody
wants things right away so it’s pretty
important to try and get out there and just
meet with some of the maintenance guys
and see what their needs are and try to
provide for them the items that they will
need to make their jobs easier.
AAMD: Has your approach changed over the
years in order to do this?
Dean: I can’t speak for the other Suppliers
but from the product we provide,
it has kind of been the same, it’s just a
matter of the technology that has changed
and making contact with the end users
and informing them in order to build
stronger relationships.
AAMD: Smart devices are becoming
bigger and smart homes are becoming more
prevalent. Is that changing your approach to
serving your residents? Are you planning on
changing even more so to provide more smart
gadgets for your residents?
Troy: I know as we build more new
products, that stuff is coming with those.
Not saying all builders do it, but on our
www.aamdhq.org
rehabs we are adding USB outlets, we are
adding smart thermostats to our units,
just to start upgrading and getting them.
It’s a convenience for the resident but in
the end it can be more of a hassle for us
because it is smarter technology and half
the guys don’t understand it and don’t
want to understand it.
Lannon: What we run into with smart
technology is it gets outdated by the
time we put some things in. It is hard to
convince the owners that this is the latest
and greatest. We could say, hey let’s invest
$15,000 in this, and six months from now,
there’s a new latest and greatest.
Chris: At the end of the day it is an
amenity. So it is one of those things
where it is common whether we like it or
not so we need to educate our people to
understand it whether it is a PowerPoint
presentation or a magnifying glass to
read the little instructions that come
with it for myself but it is common. We
have to adapt and we have to understand
our boundaries too. Some buildings we
cannot network that way. That is just the
way it is. The more that WiFi becomes a
broadband technology where the amount
of information that can be pushed through
walls or around the planet itself, we have
to adapt, or we are just going to be like
everyone else and we will fall behind.
Lannon: New technology is great from
a resident standpoint. The way that we
have tried to adapt is making all of our
operations more technological, so residents
can get real time updates on their work
orders, for instance. They don’t necessarily
care that much about a USB port as they
want to know that their work is done
when it is done. They want to know when
someone is in their apartment so we can
give real time updates from our smart
phones or our iPads that says your work
order was done – here are the notes.
Then they don’t have to spend time calling
the office or needing to follow up with
us as much.
Chris: On top of that the leasing
associates and managers, you see the
future of the package concierge, the parcel
pending, the package rooms. That alone
alleviates the time lost spent managing
packages, for instance. Some of the
challenges we see with that though is our
residents do not necessarily want to give
us their information because of whatever
their reasoning might be.
Lannon: I think it’s really tough also
to adapt to the new technologies. A lot
of us when we started, you built that
customer rapport by going into their unit
several times and communicating with
this resident. The office built that rapport.
Now everything is paperless, so you get
less face time. You have communities
with that have package concierge, they do
online lease signings, they do everything
to the point where you are losing that
communication. I think there is a fine line
of how technical we can get before we
should pull back the reigns and actually
keep that rapport and customer service.
MARCH 2018 • TRENDS | 23