The beginning of each new year is ushered in with numerous announcements of awards, ranking reports and the like recognizing the hard work accomplished by management companies and their communities. In January, our epIQ Index (Experience and Performance Intelligence Quotient) Bi-Annual Report will be among them and we are eagerly anticipating the results! Knowing that a variety of KPIs are measured when it comes to organizational goals and incentive strategies such as employee bonuses, we set out to design an authentic, transparent and fair measure of performance.
The epIQ Index accomplishes just that and here are 5 Reasons why your organization should look to it as the most relevant industry metric:
- Verified data – we can tell you exactly where your epIQ Index is coming from. There is no need for us to mine, scrape or aggregate data from multiple review sources because we own every piece of data that makes up the epIQ Index. Sure, we can easily incorporate other online reviews beyond those on ApartmentRatings, but the epIQ Index would be worthless if tainted by unverified data. Ratings and reviews became the #1 most trusted source in 2017 and year over year that has not changed. For this reason, it is important for us to take every possible measure to ensure the epIQ Index and resulting rankings are reliable and trustworthy.
- Leveled playing field – each epIQ Index is calculated in the exact same manner. Because reviews can be written on ApartmentRatings, Google, Yelp, BBB, ILS sites, social media, etc., it is nearly impossible to demonstrate parity when comparing one company’s online reputation to another. And when attempting to rank the best of the best, an apples to oranges approach just doesn’t cut it. When teams do the work, make the right decisions, and dedicate themselves to providing an exceptional living experience, how demotivating is it to be ranked impartially! If every epIQ Index was derived from inconsistent data sets, there would be no way to substantiate its overall legitimacy, which is why we focus on and maintain consistency.
- ZMOT – the epIQ Index is aligned with national consumer trends. Although Google’s “Zero Moment of Truth” campaign launched in 2011, many digital marketing strategies have yet to catch up. Renters today are more pragmatic in where they go for information and now focus mainly on sites they consider to have honest and verifiable content. Online reviews scattered here and there, some verified…some not, can do more harm than good; and slim are the chances a potential renter is going to visit all of the sites where a community has been reviewed. If you still believe (or have been told) it’s necessary to have a presence across multiple sites, independent studies regarding online shopping behaviors along with our data have long ago established the exact opposite to be true. As a consumer, would you visit 5, 15, 20 sites when researching a particular product? When searching for a new home, renters are using a similar way of thinking as they would for just about any purchase.
- What matters most – renters helped us refine the epIQ Index. With over 20 years of industry experience, we’ve gotten to know renters pretty well. What we’ve learned is that their decisions to lease and renew go far beyond a community’s 5-star rating, so we’ve made sure the epIQ Index is a comprehensive representation of what a renter can expect should they choose a particular community. Each of the four epIQ Index components offers a glimpse into team performance and overall resident satisfaction: renter ratings (wisdom of the crowd), review count (social proof), manager review engagement (sense of community) and reply time (quality of customer service). The epIQ Index puts it all out there to help renters make better decisions, which can ultimately lead to lower attrition and higher rent growth.
- Cost-free guidance and support – every day is a new day to improve your epIQ Index. Updated daily, our rolling 365-day calculation can result in significant changes to your epIQ Index. When the goal is to move up in the rankings, whether with the epIQ Index or any other, the best way to get there is with proven (as opposed to theoretical) action items, delivered by experienced educators. Collecting and analyzing feedback from millions of renters has given our Education Team clear insight into what it takes to deliver an epIQ living experience and is available to any organization, even if you’re not a SatisFacts survey client!
As the adage goes, “knowledge is power”. Knowing why your organization is #500 versus #5 and the steps you can take to improve will empower your teams to perform at a higher level. There is zero ambiguity when it comes to the epIQ Index and we are committed to keeping it that way for the betterment of all renters and the multifamily industry.
