Asset Campus Housing prides itself on providing outstanding customer service. To truly gauge if that goal is being accomplished, however, the company needs to have regular report cards, just like the students the company serves.

“We have always been strong believers in surveying our student residents,” according to Marketing Director Joe Goodwin. This year, the company has made a huge leap forward in these efforts however with the help of a new online surveying system. “Traditional paper surveys were inconvenient for students and they live in an electronic world, so filling out a paper survey just doesn’t work for them,” said Goodwin. “If students were taking the time to fill a paper survey, it’s usually because they were really upset about something, so that didn’t give us a good, complete picture of what was going on at a property.”

 

When searching for a new solution, Goodwin says Asset Campus Housing was looking for a system that would allow great flexibility. The solution now in place does just that. It allows the company to survey students before they become residents; send out one survey or 100 at a time; customize questions; customize results with bars, charts, graphs, yes/no boxes, comment boxes, etc.; and includes a complete tracking system. The survey system is fully integrated with the company’s bulk email system and provides tracking of responses, so Asset Campus can track how many surveys were opened and how many received responses. Results are real-time and online, so managers can log in at any time to view.

“Our response rate increased by 30%, which is light years ahead of what we had been receiving,” said Goodwin.  He credits the increased response rate to the system being user friendly so students will take time to respond. “We catered this around the way students think and as a result we are getting really good information from these surveys which we can use to make better business decisions,” said Goodwin. What’s next for this tech-savy company? “We’re currently performing a beta test of a completely paperless, online electronic lease,” said Goodwin. A kiosk has been installed test site, which was selected because of its large scale and sell-out leasing rate. “Based on the way this generation of students uses technology, we are very confident that this test will be successful and in the end, better serve students and save owners money,” he added.