In the Common Interest II: Embracing Five Star Customer Service

By John Carona

How can your organization get Five Star reviews, from clients and employees?

In 1979 John Carona founded Associa, a community association management company, with only one client. Under his leadership, Associa has evolved into the largest and most successful management company in North America. 

In his second book, In the Common Interest II: Embracing Five Star Customer Service, Carona shares the secrets of his success for those in the community management industry and any leader interested in the “how” of building a successful service business. Customer service is at the heart of his philosophy, guiding his employees in every action, communication, process, and relationship. It permeates every aspect of his company, from employee culture to client relationships.

Carona does not brag about his success; he genuinely wants to help others create their own successes. He shares the details of his approach: Associa’s mission statement, four pillars, and five core values, as the tools for implementing his Five Star Customer Service Model. Each chapter includes easy-to-understand explanations of these tenets, a “Service in Action” case study, and self-assessment questions that readers can use to guide their own organizational development.

​You will walk away with a thorough understanding of the importance of customer service and how to implement similar policies and practices to help your own organization be the best it can be.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Greenleaf Book Group
• Release date: Oct 16, 2018
• ISBN: 9781626344631

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OUR FOUNDATION

We have entered the era of the customer. Today providing customers with outstanding customer service is essential to building loyal customers and a long-lasting brand.

—JERRY GREGOIRE,

Former CIO of Dell Computers

INTRODUCTION

We often use the metaphor of a house in our business, largely because it is a concrete example that relates to the building of a structure and the process of maintaining it. Just as a house with a weak foundation eventually will fall, especially in the face of significant obstacles, so will a business.

While many aspects of our industry and of our company have changed over the years, one thing has remained the same: We built Associa on a solid foundation of service that enables us to expand and to withstand and overcome challenges. That effort also enables us to build and to maintain loyal customers and a lasting brand.

Similarly, the three chapters that compose Part I will build a foundation for this book by explaining more about who we are as a company, differentiating our clients and customers, and defining our service model. Cumulatively, they demonstrate how the elements that make us different also can make providing excellent customer service a challenge.

CHAPTER 1

Our Story

Customer Service represents the heart of

a brand in the hearts of its customers.

—KATE NASSER,

Executive Coach in Customer Service

In 1979 I started Associa with one client, less than $5,000, and big plans for the future. Community association management was fairly new and the market relatively small. Our industry was in its infancy, and my experience reflected my instincts and what I learned as I went along.

I believed then that homeowners who chose to live in a community association did so with higher expectations than most, and I wanted my company to be the industry leader on whom clients could depend for integrity, reliability, trustworthiness, and, above all, exceptional customer service. Since then we have grown to manage thousands of communities across the world. Both local and global, our service revolves around our customers as we focus on earning their loyalty while adapting to their needs and interests. The industry and Associa may have changed dramatically, but our passion for striving to be the best has never wavered.

Our company relies today on the same foundation upon which I established it. In the last four decades community management, along with almost everything else, has become a commodity. We can compete on price, but at the end of the day, it is our service level that will attract new clients and retain existing ones. From the beginning, our goal has been to build our company and our reputation by virtue of our loyalty, dependability, honesty, and unparalleled customer service.

OUR SCOPE

I never dreamed Associa would become what it is, but the foundation upon which we built it remains strong: service. Today I am proud to say we lead the industry. Associa is the largest and most stable management company in North America, and collectively, we manage more associations than any other company. Whether associations have ten homes or ten thousand, when we manage them, they can rest assured they are partnering with the industry leader in customer service, financial management, and information technology.

Through the years we have grown by winning new clients organically and by acquiring the best of the best management companies across the world and making them a part of our Associa family. Although our footprint is unmatched, we are keenly aware that with great success comes great responsibility. Regardless of our size, we can be vulnerable if we do not provide the best service and realize that service has changed dramatically since our early days. In evaluating our service, our customers do not merely compare us to our local community management competitor. They expect us to match or surpass the swift, personalized responses they get from their favorite fast or instant delivery or online company.

OUR PEOPLE

As a service business, our most important asset is our people. With forty years of experience and thousands of communities under our management, Associa has in-house expertise for every type of community association. We are the worldwide leader in managing homeowners associations, master-planned communities, high-rise condominiums, garden-style condos and townhomes, and office/ commercial associations.

When we say that our people are our differentiator—what sets us apart from others—we mean we set high expectations beginning with how we treat one another, what we do for each other, and how we treat our customers. We search diligently to hire the most qualified candidates across our company to serve our homeowners associations. Our priority is to assemble leaders who have varied experience in our industry and beyond, including in financial services and hospitality. What we can learn from others makes us stronger as we continue to stay true to our roots and focus on our core of helping communities achieve their vision.

One of our common sayings is that we are better together than apart. That is true as we look internally to learn best practices from acquired companies and externally to other industries and different experiences. No matter how our industry changes, we always will be a people business. Our people, who work with our boards and homeowners every day, are who make us great. That is why we are so proud to have assembled the most talented and most accredited group of community managers in the industry. They are the ones who focus on providing excellent service to our customers daily.

OUR CONTINUING EDUCATION PROGRAMS

Our managers and all our employees have access to training and resources that cover every area of management, facilities maintenance, governance, and financial services. They are equipped with the information, skills, and educational programs they need to meet the complex range of demands that face the communities we serve. This includes being up to date on the latest best practices and all local, state, and federal regulations that may affect our clients; and maintaining community management licenses and certifications.

We make these resources available not only to our employees but also to board members and homeowners. We believe that the better educated our clients and customers are, the better our partnerships with them will be.

OUR VALUE TO OUR CLIENTS

The value of Associa is that we can put our size and strength to work for our clients. We have worked hard to achieve the industry’s most rigorous financial standards and security measures, and we partner that expertise with many other values, including the best prices from trusted vendors, innovative technology, and the highest number of certified managers in the industry. What’s more, we can scale our operations for any community, regardless of its size. We offer customized management solutions tailored to fit a client’s specific needs, whatever they may be. By reinforcing our local expertise with our national resources, we enable our customers to live life better. Our core services are described below:

Lifestyle Planning

Community Governance

Facilities Management

Accounting and Financial Services

Integrated Services

Lifestyle Planning

Our goal is to understand the vision our clients have for their communities and to partner with them to achieve it. Our expertise and experience with communities of all types and sizes allow us to provide consulting to help our board members and residents shape the communities of their dreams. Once that vision is established, we can deliver the resources to make that dream a reality—from architectural standards and project management to activities and engagement within the community.

Community Governance

Our teams are trained in the delicate balance of enforcing governing documents while maintaining a positive sense of community. We also specialize in streamlining the board’s governance functions. Through our extensive knowledge and expertise, we assist our clients in coordinating and preparing for monthly and annual meetings. We also help them communicate and deal effectively in conflict management or dispute resolution among association members.

Facilities Management

Associa manages the administrative and operational needs of our clients’ communities; assists with bidding, negotiating, and contracting aspects of dealing with third-party service providers; and conducts hiring and training of on-site staff. We work with them to understand and address their maintenance and long-term planning needs through our network of qualified vendors and even our own Associa OnCall maintenance team. This ensures that qualified professionals meet all our clients’ short- and long-term needs. Our experience related to facilities management includes landscaping, HVAC systems, pools, elevators, security systems, and other applicable areas.

Accounting and Financial Services

We offer a broad range of accounting and financial services to assist clients with the day-to-day management of a community. Typical services include accounts payable, financial statements, annual audits, tax preparation, homeowner billing and assessment receipt, employee payroll processing, late notifications and routine collections, bookkeeping, and budgeting services. Our fully integrated software package incorporates our industry’s tightest security measures and best functionality. We keep our clients’ financial data safe at all times and always available to them in practically any format they need. Our accounting systems and processes ensure our customers have their community data at hand so they can plan the important next steps to achieving their vision.

Integrated Services

Associa’s value to our clients encompasses not only our management and financial services but also the wide range of value we offer through our integrated services to communities, namely, Integrated Community Management and Professional Services.

Integrated Community Management includes all the services that support the day-to-day operations of a community. Examples include maintenance and repair, communication tools such as community websites and newsletters, and real estate leasing and sales.

Professional Services are specialized services that are part of the Associa family of companies and offer exceptional service and value. Services may include insurance, document storage, and title services.

By offering these integrated services, we enable clients to meet all their community’s needs through one managing agent. We believe our role is to be a holistic resource for those who choose to work with us.

• • •

Whatever we plan, whatever we hope for at Associa, we always consider our roots. Where we came from and how we got here inspire us to strive always to offer five star customer service.

SERVICE IN ACTION

One of Associa’s long-term executives often shares this memorable experience with our people. It reflects our service commitment that occasionally requires us to prioritize the needs and interests of others above our own:

In the very early days of the company—before we had expanded beyond North Texas—a horrific freeze and ice storm hit the Dallas area the morning of Christmas Eve. If you know anything about Dallas, you know that our citizens do not deal well with cold weather. Consequently, there was a general sense of panic throughout the city. Because we were in the midst of the holiday season, many of our fellow employees were on vacation, so those of us at work were pitching in where we were needed, and I was working in our accounting department.

As the day wore on, the temperature continued to drop, and by mid-afternoon we were getting calls from multiple associations about burst water pipes. It was clear that things would get only worse after nightfall, and we collectively realized that we had a long night of work ahead.

We called our families to let them know we wouldn’t be home as planned and then began lining up our maintenance team, along with several third-party plumbers, to handle the ensuing hours. We set up our conference room as command central and got ready for the long night of calls. As you might imagine, having a torrent of water pouring from your ceiling on Christmas Eve does NOT bring out the best in a person. In more than thirty years with the company, I’ve never dealt with customers in a higher state of hysteria than we did that night. (We had one caller tell us that he knew where our offices were and that if we didn’t have a plumber to his unit in twenty minutes, he would be on our doorstep with his gun. So much for peace on earth, goodwill toward men! We made sure the doors were locked, called the police, and then resumed answering the phones.)

Throughout the night, we did our best to calm and reassure dozens and dozens of customers whose holiday had been ruined by this weather. We were on the radio dispatching our technicians and trying to keep their spirits up (and dispatching others to rescue the technicians a couple of times when their trucks spun out on the ice). Our work didn’t slow down until late morning on Christmas Day when we finally were able to go home.

It was admittedly not the holiday any of us had planned—my mother still refers to it as the year I missed Christmas—but as we all finally headed out, we felt really good about what we were able to do for our customers. Not a single person on the team had thought twice about sacrificing the holiday or having to work. Even then, our culture of family spirit and loyalty to our customers was second nature to us. The days that followed brought many thank-you notes and even some flowers from grateful homeowners . . . and an excellent real-life story of the power of great customer service.

QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER

1.What industry are you in, and how has service changed in your industry since its inception?

2.What changes have you made or are you considering to ensure you are prepared to provide great service as customer expectations change?

3.How do you prepare to provide great service in the future while still serving your customers today?

CHAPTER 2

Our Clients and Customers

A customer is the most important visitor on our premises. He is not dependent on us. We are dependent on him. He is not an interruption of our work. He is the purpose of it. He is not an outsider in our business. He is part of it. We are not doing him a favor by serving him. He is doing us a favor by giving us the opportunity to do so.

—MAHATMA GANDHI,

Leader of Independence in British-Ruled India

We excel in community association management only when we recognize the importance of our dependence on those whom we serve and welcome every opportunity to meet their needs and interests, whether large and complex or small and easy. Like most service companies, at Associa we have always been committed to and passionate about providing five star customer service to our clients and customers. Our industry, however, differs from hospitality, retail, or other service industries. Understanding those differences is essential to providing great customer service in community management and to understanding our service recovery process when things go wrong.

THOSE WE SERVE

While other industries may offer services and/or products directly to their customers, ours is more complicated. We define our clients as the community associations and the volunteer boards of directors who are elected by their members, while the association members (homeowners) whom they represent are their customers—and ours. To keep this relationship in mind, we use clients to refer only to associations and board members but customers to include all homeowners, including board members. To serve each of them effectively, every member of our team must understand the complexities of our relationships to community association boards of directors and to the homeowners who elect their respective board members. An additional layer to this complexity is that these relationships change frequently as communities hold annual elections, often resulting in many changes in board memberships.

As we strive to deliver the best possible customer service, especially in trying to exceed the expectations of unhappy customers, we never forget that today’s unhappy customer may be tomorrow’s board member—or president! Boards have the ability to hire or fire us, and our relationship with them reflects a business-to-business service approach. By comparison, we serve homeowners in more of a business-to-consumer relationship.

Boards of Directors

These volunteer leaders come from every profession and every walk of life. Their common interest is their investments in their homes and, for the vast majority, their opportunities to contribute to the success of their communities. As volunteers for a nonprofit corporation they have legal and fiduciary responsibilities to manage the assets of their neighbors effectively.

While many of our volunteer homeowners have extensive professional knowledge about finances, construction, law, and communication, they will succeed in their volunteer roles only if they rely on the advice of experts in community association management. That is precisely how our Associa team can