Deutsche Wohnen starts its 2020 tenants‘ survey
Today Deutsche Wohnen is starting a Germany-wide survey of 31,000 tenants in its residential properties. The survey will focus on the regions of Brunswick, Hanover, Dresden and Berlin-Hellersdorf, and all Deutsche Wohnen tenants in these regions will be invited to respond. The aim of the survey is to find out what tenants think of service provision, service quality and customer orientation with a view to making improvements in quality in response to these needs.
The survey will focus on the following topic areas: satisfaction with one’s flat and the residential complex, customer service, rent levels and socio-demographic factors.
As Lars Urbansky, a member of the Management Board, explains, “The opinion of our tenants is very important to Deutsche Wohnen. With these regular surveys, we have been offering a service that our tenants really value. In 2019, the response rate was 36 per cent – an exceptionally positive result. The responses we receive help us to continue to develop and also to address the topics that concern our tenants.”
Identifying needs and adopting measures
Over the last few years, it has become clear that a key concern of our tenants is the time we have been taking to respond when processing reports of defects. In the meantime, Deutsche Wohnen has centralised its customer service in order to improve processing time and to deal more promptly with any queries that arise. In addition, we are continuously developing our channels of communication with tenants like our digital customer portal.
It also emerged from previous surveys that there was further room for improvement when it came to the care and cleanliness of external grounds. Accordingly, we have adopted initial measures to meet our tenants’ needs like introducing a signage system in refuse collection areas, improving the lighting in external grounds and creating bicycle parking facilities.
The survey
As in previous years, Deutsche Wohnen is donating one euro for each valid response in its survey. This year, the proceeds will be going to the #sicherheim campaign, an initiative that supports victims of domestic violence and that gives publicity to a topic that in the past has been hidden from view.
The 2020 tenants’ survey is being conducted by the independent polling institute ActivBo and will run until the beginning of November 2020. In 2019, Deutsche Wohnen surveyed approximately 34,000 households across the whole of Germany. The tenants’ survey is conducted every year and is always anonymised. This means that it is not possible to identify individual respondents on the basis of their responses. The tenants’ feedback is evaluated exclusively in aggregated form.
Deutsche Wohnen
Deutsche Wohnen is one of the leading publicly listed residential property companies in Europe. The business focus of the company is on managing its own portfolio of residential properties in dynamic metropolitan regions and conurbations in Germany. Deutsche Wohnen sees itself as having both a social responsibility and a duty to maintain and newly develop good-quality and affordable housing in vibrant residential neighbourhoods. As at 30 June 2020, the portfolio comprised a total of around 165,000 units, of which 162,000 are residential and 2,900 commercial. Deutsche Wohnen SE is listed in the Deutsche Börse’s DAX and is also included in the leading indices EPRA/NAREIT, STOXX Europe 600, GPR 250 and DAX 50 ESG.