Dear Blogary

With summer starting to fade, I find myself reflecting on Metropolis then and now…

There is such a disconnect between when I started my company and now. Like all things, there are good and bad parts of the whole that I tend to think about. When my wife and I opened Metropolis, we were in control of each and every action. We attended each and every Board meeting and were in fact, the representation of Metropolis.

We discovered our clients loved the fact that we were the owners, and had pride in what we did. Sure, we made mistakes like everyone does when something is new to them. However, clients understood our miss-steps along the way, and were willing to forgive since we were a start-up company, powered by the owners and a small administrative staff. For some reason, smaller is more forgivable, especially when the heart of your efforts are in the right place.

Now that we are much larger, the balance between personal involvement and overseeing each and every action is a much more complicated management endeavor. I am certain most home grown company owners can attest to the same challenges. We created the RFA system to capture all of the information recalled by the staff for every occurrence, and communication between us and our clientele. We quickly learned, the written word cannot solely and adequately capture the nuance of a situation. Nor does written communication capture vocal inflection and personal influence.

With Metmail and coming soon, CommunityWatch, we have created a technology that allows Board members to review and prioritize the homeowners’ request. We also created Metchec, where homeowners can leave a message that is transcribed using VOIP technology so that I can hear the voice inflection using a WAV file. I then can instruct my staff on how best to resolve the issue. It’s as close as I have gotten to answering each and every inquiry myself. I have to start relying on my customers and my clients when things go awry, and I created MetChec for that reason. We also created some surveys that we attach to our emails so that our customers can rate the service of my staff. I am not afraid of criticism or change and ask each and every customer to use MetChec or our surveys to gauge my staffs performance.

As we continue to grow and improve our services, I now wish to ask all clients if there are other areas we can improve upon to provide a clear, concise and personalized interaction with Metropolis. For that matter, please share any communication improvements that can be made by a management company.

As always, we thank you for the many years of service you have allowed Metropolis to prevail and I personally welcome your feedback on how we can better service you and improve upon our communication outlets. We created the branding .." We Are Metropolis for a very important reason. We realize just how special sharing your day to day existance is to us, and we treasure that opportunity.

Martin J. Lobb

President

301-779-1800