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CONNECTIVITY StudentHousingBusiness.com January/February 2017 71 " A skilled connectivity provider will help you "digitize" your property by connecting critical building systems, such as energy management, leak detection, camera monitoring, water irrigation controls, asset tracking and more. What We Don't Measure, We Don't Improve To assure you aren't delivering an inferior experience to your resi- dents, your service provider should provide the following information and encourage you to review it with them annually: • How many support calls do your residents make to the provider? • What is the average call center answer time (for year-to-date, but also for the "turn" season in student housing)? • How quickly are resident issues resolved? • What is the "resident satisfaction score" for issues addressed? • For the prior year, how many new community activations were on- time or ahead-of-time, versus those that weren't? • For the prior year, how many bandwidth circuits were delivered on-time for community activations, versus those that were late? You want your connectivity partner to continuously monitor and report key metrics, and invest in delivering results that make a difference to your residents' experience. That means a dual focus: (1) employee engagement and customer service training across every operational function; (2) upgrading and adapting management tools for customers, communities and the Internet of Things (IoT) world. Turn Network Connectivity into Opportunity Providing connectivity in bulk not only allows residents to enjoy a bet- ter customer experience, but it opens the door for a "smarter" communi- ty. A skilled connectivity provider will help you "digitize" your property by connecting critical building systems, such as energy management, leak detection, camera monitoring, water irrigation controls, asset track- ing and more. An investment in great community-wide internet service with a forward-thinking provider will produce excellent long-term return on your investment. A smart community drives smart outcomes. Your connectivity pro- vider can collect asset data and resident data across the community. You can manage facility and workforce operations more efficiently with predictive analytics. Just imagine how an automated work order can ini- tiate action before a light bulb fails, before an air conditioning unit needs repair. The infrastructure of your community should be as hard working as you are. Securing enough bandwidth is no longer the number one priority for progressive owners and managers. Instead, managing the network, which grows in complexity each day, is both the biggest challenge and the biggest opportunity. With the availability of bandwidth increasing — and its price going down — monitoring and managing data has a much higher priority. The time has passed when you can treat your network as a commodity. Equally, the time has passed when you can allow your service provider to be someone less than a business partner dedicated to your success and your resident satisfaction. Robert Grosz is chief revenue officer, and Bruce Sanders is chief marketing officer at Elauwit. We'll send the industry's top news stories to your inbox every Wednesday. Subscribe at www.StudentHousingBusiness.com. Subscribe to the Student Housing Business e-newsletter