CarrAmerica's InfoCentre Tightens Tenant Ties

Essention Responds 24x7... This smiling lady is Tamara Tanner, Special Projects Manager for CarrAmerica in Northern California.  She's smiling because she's excited about using essention, a web-based service for landlord-tenant-vendor communications.  (Or maybe she's laughing at me taking the picture.)  I visited with her and Martin Ward, VP - Director of Operations, at CarrAmerica's office in Golden Gateway Commons in San Francisco last week.   

Essention powers CarrAmerica's InfoCentre.  You'll see a link to it at CarrAmerica's home page; but you won't be able to enter InfoCentre without a password.  Depending upon whether you are a tenant, a vendor or a CarrAmerica property manager, you'll see a different set of data for each property -- for example, Building Rules, Hours of Operation, Emergency Procedures.  But the real benefit of the system is the documentation of communications between CarrAmerica and its tenants.  "My office is too cold/hot."  "My light has burned out."  "I need after hours HVAC."   All of these requests are actually processed by essention's Customer Support Representatives (CSRs) in Seattle -- 24 hours a day, seven days a week.  According to essention's COO Karen Little, the response time is typically 15 minutes with CarrAmerica's engineers receiving notification via SkyTel pagers.  Normally the cost of essention runs between $.05 and $.10 per square foot per year.

Tanner and Ward described essention's CSRs as their "conscience."  It was clear that the primary interest of the CSRs was serving a customer (a tenant) and solving a problem -- almost like an ombudsmen insuring fair treatment.  Interesting concept.  Does essention save CarrAmerica money?  Perhaps.  But the real benefit is better service.  Fewer telephone calls to a property manager means more quality time outside of the office dealing face-to-face with tenants.  So here's an example of how technology can strengthen personal relationships. 

PikeNet Note: Would you like to raise your visibility at PikeNet?  Buy a Featured Site link in a PikeNet Channel.  For example, click Management on the PikeNet home page, and you'll see essention (along with AvidXchange, manageStar, SiteStuff, Space Database and WinStack) big and bold as a Featured Site.   Interested?  Send me e-mail.

--Peter Pike / ppike@pikenet.com