Answer Your Telephone with Care (Advisor, Fall 2000)

Fair housing rules and guidelines must be followed while talking on the phone

Apartment rental offices receive many telephone calls each day from persons inquiring whether there are available apartments, what the screening criteria are, and other issues pertaining to the apartment community. An employee's answers can cause the caller to have expectations of an apartment community that may or may not be realized when that person visits or makes application. In a situation when the person is given information during a telephone call that is later contradicted when the caller visits, the contradiction in information may be assumed to be a result of housing discrimination. For example, one of the most common issues raised from testing occurs when a tester calls and is told there are available two bedroom apartments, but when the tester arrives at the apartment community the next day, he is told there are no available apartments.

To effectively manage the risk from this possible scenario, employees who answer the telephone must be careful to convey only accurate information and explain that the information is accurate only for that specific time. For example, an appropriate answer to the question, "Do you have any two bedroom apartments available?" might be, "Today we are showing an available two-bedroom apartment, but we never know how long that availability will continue because someone could put down a deposit on that apartment later today."

The best way to prevent the serious consequences of improper information conveyed via the telephone is to insure that all persons who answer the telephone on your property are carefully trained in what information can be provided, and how to provide that information. For example, there may be some answers that should be read from a printed sheet to insure both consistency and accuracy in the answer. In some circumstances, employees might be instructed not to answer questions at all, but to take a message and have another, more experienced, employee return the call. Telephone training should include topics basic to good marketing principles and include an explanation on how to answer the following questions involving the three most important fair housing related topics:

* availability, with an explanation of the fact that availability can quickly change;
* screening criteria, with a careful limitation on who can explain criteria and how the criteria is explained;
* resident population, with a careful wording of how such questions should be answered.