Archive for May, 2012

Many people say that you are what you eat. What do they mean by this? Many people who eat poorly are usually out of shape, lethargic, and not meeting their personal health goals. If they ate healthy, their whole lives would be different. So if a person eats things that will hurt their body, their body will reflect their eating habits. Do you think a storage owner resembles what their facilities look like? Let’s examine this thought.

Many owners put their heart, soul and sweat into their storage facilities and hope to get the maximum gain from this. Well that is the description of most owners. Unfortunately there are some who do not do anything to help their company put their best foot forward. The self storage owners that come into work daily looking to find ways to increase business are the same owners that have and own beautifully well kept facilities. The owners that just try to sit back and collect a paycheck are typically the ones with not so great looking facilities. Little do those managers know that how a facility looks can dramatically affect how a customer feels about renting there. If a owner knew that they were losing business because of how their facilities looked, would they make an effort to change their appearance?

Not everyone will have the capital to make the changes they want to their facilities, so they do the best they can do. Some owners have put their selves into debt just to make their facilities brighter, cleaner and more sophisticated than those around them only to get minimal return out of it. Of course it takes more than just a clean and well kept facility to make customers come through the door to rent, but it does help. There are many run down facilities out there where the owner is very satisfied with the income that is coming in so they do not do much with their facilities. They are fine just getting by. Does this make them bad storage owners?

No it does not. Ultimately it is up to the self storage customer on where they want to store. They have to make the right decision for their storage needs. They have to be the one to decide if you want to store there. The owners hope that they do decide to rent from their facility anyway and hope that the customer sees they are trying to keep costs down by just making sure they have a place to store. Some people are just looking for somewhere to put their belongings and not really needing anything extravagant. If that is the case, the customer doesn’t really need a well kept facility. They just need to have a place where they can put their belongings for now. A clean facility is great for the majority of those people who want to store, but it is not the only thing they are looking for.

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.

How many angry customers call and they want speak to the owner of the facility. Sometimes I chuckle at people who think they have the opportunity to speak to the owner of the facility. They believe that we have a direct line to the owner and they will be readily available to speak to them on demand. People think they can come into the facility and wait around for the owner to come walking through the door. When the customer is angry or not happy with the management they believe they can snap and the owner will be there with bells on. Are they crazy to think this?

Some self storage owners like to be hands on and do whatever they can to please their customers. This could include having their phone numbers where customers can see them. If you walk to into some large scale retail environments you will see that the regional manager or even the store owner’s phone number and picture will be on the wall behind customer service. It is sure that if the customer does not like what they are hearing, they whip out their cell phones and expect to speak to the person in that picture. Some people are actually shocked if the person owning the store answers the phone. Why should they be shocked? Their number is up there for a reason. Is that reasonable in the self storage industry?

As an owner, they want everything in their company to run smoothly. Some owners decide to visit their facilities often just to make sure that everything is running in tip top condition. They do not want anything out of place and they want to make sure that their managers are running good businesses. You will find that some owners walk customers around the facilities and get behind the counter as if they were the manager. The customers do not always know that they are speaking to the owner of the company and are shocked to see them behind the counter.

It shouldn’t shock customers to know that they can get to the owner of some companies. They should not think that they can get to the owner of every company. They just have to use common sense. The larger the company, the harder it is to reach the person at the top. Usually they do have someone that handles customer issues that escalate to the corporate side of things. Customers do not need to be offended if they cannot reach the top if their situation can be taken care of. Also there is not a guarantee that the owner is going to be side with the customer in any case. The owner still has to protect their business and ensure that customers are happy at the same time. No one said their job was easy.

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Disclamer: This entry is intended to promote our partner StorageMart and some or all participants received compensation.