Rentshield is consistently striving to exceed customer expectations

That is the message from Rentshield we received earlier this week in their update on what has been happening at Rentshield Direct a major UK Landlord and Tenant insurance provider and tenant referencing service for letting agents.

Since their large investment on a web based system back in March they have learned many things. They have tried and tested numerous methods of ensuring that the service they are providing is not only efficient but that they surpass the standards agents have come to expect from a referencing agency.

It has been said that ‘making mistakes simply means you are learning faster’ and this is an approach that Rentshield not only use as a company, but in life. They believe that if they are presented with errors they have made, they will endeavour to learn from them, only to improve- and this makes them stronger.

They have recently implemented the full workings of their web system and have now added new practices to make their referencing service faster and more efficient.

Although they did experience a backlog in some of the work due to faults out of our control, they quickly rectified this as a team, working many hours of overtime and have found that they are now more equipped in terms of managing the workload comfortably and conscientiously.

The percentage of reports they are now sending back to our clients within 24 hours of receiving applications is constantly increasing. They will always experience those tricky references that take longer than expected- but Felicity their general manager says in the newsletter, can confidently confirm that they are doing everything in their power to obtain required information.
They have found that agents who have been inputting applications directly on to their online system are generally receiving reports back faster than those that are continuing to fax them. Respectively, out of the agents that do fax applications to Rentshield, they are finding that the delayed applications are in many instances the ones that have been sent through with either missing information or illegible handwriting.

If before sending applications through they are checked through with the tenant to pick up on anything that may be missing- Felicity believes that those agents will find that the service they receive will be again, of a higher standard.

Other providers have said this recently as well about faxing reference forms. We at jml Property Services can see why many still do this. It is easy, particularly if you are very busy and you want the forms to go out quickly from your office. However if the people the other end cannot read the tenant applicants writing including important telephone number and email addresses then naturally this will slow down the process.

We are now in the age of adding data to computers and once it is on the system, it should mean as long as the person entering the information has done it correctly it will be much faster. The referencing companies like Rentshield will charge Agents a fee for the reference and the majority of agents add a percentage onto this to administer the referencing process. Taking this into account those agents that are not spending a few extra minutes adding tenant’s details to the providers on line system and just faxing them are not giving the tenants a good service. If there are delays because of their errors, they probably blame the reference company.

I have been in the lettings business over 30 years and know how some agents will try and take short cuts.

jml property services via their introduction insurance advertising sites insurance jml insurance.co.uk and / jml-property-insurance.co.uk are Rentshield agents.