At Storman, understanding how your self-storage business operates is helps us deliver you smart software designed to streamline your role – and a great user experience. To support this, we send new staff on site visits as part of the onboarding process so they can see first-hand how things work.
Most recently, we sent Nic Parr, our newest Customer Onboarding Coordinator, out into the world of self-storage to help him understand our customers and our industry. Here’s his run-down on the experience!
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Hello, my name is Nic Parr and I am part of the Customer Onboarding team here in Brisbane, Australia. As part of my training, I spent a week with our clients at their self storage sites to help me understand the day-to-day roles and responsibilities of our clients. I was lucky enough to spend the week at Storage King!
My first day visiting Storage King was at the Mount Gravatt site. It was a grey and rainy day – which, according to Presilla (the site manager), meant that it was going to be a fairly quiet day as far as foot traffic was concerned. Despite the weather, there was still plenty to do at the site! I was shown the daily procedures that get run every morning, including the various reports and banking tasks that occupy the first few hours of the day.
Storage King Mount Gravatt, in all its glory!
Whilst at Mount Gravatt I signed up new customers, sold merchandise, and assisted with a range of administrative tasks, including (but certainly not limited to!): walking the facility to make sure the units were locked and nothing was out of place, adding and removing overlocks and cleaning the facility. Presilla remarked that we were able to get a lot more done with an extra set of hands!
I was surprised to learn that the facility usually only has one staff member working on any given day. To help facilitate communication between staff, the notes system in Storman Cloud is used extensively, so both staff members can keep informed on what the other has been up to. This is especially important, as I came to notice how personalised the storage business can be – every customer is different, and it is vital for the staff to know their customers and cater to their needs.
After a few days at Mount Gravatt, I then moved to the Jindalee store. Only two years old, the site is a very modern facility. Being a newer location, the staff at Jindalee are focussing on securing new business. I also noticed how much the facility location attracted different customers compared to Mt Gravatt. Kerrie, the manager, commented that because the site was close to quite a few aged care facilities, many of their storers were retirees needing to downsize.
Time for Round Two – Storage King Jindalee!
The staff at both sites were incredibly generous with their time and in sharing their experiences with me. There is definitely a lot more to self storage than I had originally thought! The units are not just rented to people moving houses – they’re so much more versatile. They are used as offices for businesses, garages for working on classic cars as well as storage for charities and people in vulnerable situations. The most shocking thing I encountered was that storers would just leave their unwanted belongings and rubbish at the facility after moving out.
My visit to Storage King has been a great learning experience. Getting a better understanding on how a self storage business operates and how Storman Cloud is used will be incredibly helpful to me as a Customer Onboarding Coordinator. I have gained a better insight into the industry and how to assist our future customers in achieving success with Storman!
