While there is great opportunity for adding high value to the market place, Valet Living doesn't take the time to set their Service Valets, District Managers, or Sales Associates up for success. There is a hunger in the District Mangers to have the greater tools to achieve greater results and be trained through better systems of vetting applicates, team management training, communication training, and greater funds for operational budgets. Now while the service itself has potential, there is a lack of funds being placed into the teams doing all the hard work. It's your classic pyramid, the bottom workers doing all the hard work while the top workers enjoy the fruits. Yes, the bottom workers don't have the risk, however, there isn't great risk in this line of work. VL is all about getting the contract with a client and money but doesn't care about their teams for quality work output, hence the high turner over. I suppose you'd say they do care about the quality of work since they will just fire you or make it very hard to achieve district bonuses. While this is the structure of every company, there is a great deal of potential to better value Service Valets, District Mangers and Sales teams that VL fails to invest in. Service Valets, if paid a greater wage for their hard work, would have less turn over. If the funds were placed into operations to pay them additional money, then the company itself would have a higher quality of value being added to residents, property ownership groups and property management teams. District Managers are expected to be at meetings and except customer service complaints early in the morning and then expected to take the afternoon off. Now the catch 22 is, the Service Valets don't value their jobs due the hard work with low pay so they frequently quit without notice (job abandonment) or simply call into work. So, DMs are now spending their afternoon solving a problem they don't have the budget to fix. Meaning, there's no funds normally to pay another Service Valet to cover for the absent employee. This means the DMs end up driving to the property, no matter where ever it is in the district and pick up the trash in the absence of their team. Yes, the quality of the teams that are employed are all on the DMs shoulders, but the wages the company allows the DMs to pay the teams don't attract quality workers sometimes and creates this revolving door of constantly employing part time SVs that don't last long in the job. Now to dive further, there is multiple levels of customer service complaints. If there is high level complaint, the DM must respond within a short period of time or there is an escalation of the complaint all the way up to the CEO of the company if the DM doesn't respond fast enough. So, if there was a complaint during the afternoon, while the DM was supposed to be taking time for themselves, they would have to respond and always have there email and phone available for the need of a response. Lastly, difficult to serve Service Valet properties, like garden style buildings that have multiple flights of stairs to climb, are extremely exhausting to serve. Yet the budgets normally don't reflect the amount of human power that is needed to provide a great service to the clients. The whole upper management of VL promotes getting the job done asap so there is more money at the end of the day. But then there's no focus on quality service or on the residents who are paying for the service. Now, a lot of residents hate the service because residents abuse it and leave bags of trash on their doorstep rather than use the bin. Things get messy, smell bad, and most of all look bad. Then you add the Property Managers often times don't like the service and then don't properly educate their residents on how to use the service. Again, its the whole issue of a catch 22. All this to say, VL has great potential to solve a much needed issue of safety and cleanliness of trash at multifamily communities. However, they don't provide the necessary tools, training, and servant leadership an employee longs to have with their company. There is a high turn over of DMs and SVs and Sales Associates for a reason.
