Local Knowledge Required... This week's announcement that IBM intends to shift several thousand "high-paying programming jobs overseas" in order to save $168 million (Wall Street Journal, Jan 19, 2004) caught my attention. As I wondered in December's Dispatch, Building Automation: It's Happening (Dec 9), could owners save money outsourcing building operations overseas?

Not if you're Crescent Real Estate Equities (NYSE: CEI), which manages a portfolio of 30 million square feet of office space across the Southwest. According to Dennis Cruse, the key to customer service is local knowledge and accessibility. So, for example, every Crescent engineer has a Crescent e-mail address and wireless access to Crescent's automated work request system, ROSS (Rapid On-Site Solutions).

ROSS was created partly using Maximo from MRO Software. Work requests can be transmitted in traditional fashion (phone, fax, walk-in). Or they can be entered electronically via e-mail or a building's own portal, like Greenway Plaza in Houston, TX. But once a request is in the system, it's handled automatically through its resolution.

It's simple. Connected engineers feel happier about their jobs and deliver better customer service. And, based upon customer surveys, Crescent has recently won Customer Service Awards for Excellence from BOMA and CEL & Associates (2001 and 2002).

As Cruse argues, "You cannot provide quality service from 2,000 miles away." When tenants request service calls, they need to communicate with people very familiar with the property. The first line of excellent customer service is a wired engineer en route to fix a problem.

--Peter Pike