The tenant who calls three times about the same leak: how status updates on repair requests make the difference

It's Tuesday morning, quarter past nine. Mrs Jansen calls. For the third time this week, about the same leak under the kitchen tap. All sorts of things are happening with her report: the engineer is scheduled, the part has been ordered. Except she doesn't know that. As far as she's concerned, it's been silent since she made the report, and silence feels like standstill.

If you recognise this pattern, you also know the cost. Every repeat call is five to ten minutes of looking up, explaining and reassuring. Multiply that by the number of open repair requests in your portfolio and you're looking at a substantial chunk of your working week. Work that adds nothing to the repair itself, because that was already underway.

This isn't a matter of carelessness or a busy week. It's information asymmetry. You can see exactly where the report stands in your system: scheduled, waiting for a part, passed to the contractor. The tenant sees nothing at all. As long as that gap exists, calling remains the tenant's only way of knowing whether anything is happening. Trying harder doesn't solve that. Only structural updates do.

Status updates on repair requests matter more than speed

The instinct is to invest in faster handling. Understandable, but the data point elsewhere. In the Aedes-benchmark 2025, the average rating for the repair process rose to an 8.1, and Aedes explicitly states that contact with staff proves decisive for a positive experience. Not the turnaround time, but the contact. A tenant who knows where their report stands will forgive a week's wait. A tenant who hears nothing experiences three days as neglect.

The flip side is just as well documented. The Woonbond's report on notifications (Woonbond is the Dutch national tenants' association) for the second half of 2025 shows that half of all reports concern poor landlord conduct, with landlords who communicate poorly explicitly named alongside maintenance defects. Tenants who feel ignored don't quietly get over their frustration. They report it to the Woonbond, to the municipality, or they show up as a poor score in your next huurdersoordeel (tenant satisfaction score).

Silent dissatisfaction is therefore the most dangerous kind. The tenant who calls three times is still giving you another chance. The tenant who has stopped calling has already drawn their conclusion.

Three moments that catch almost all repeat contact

You don't need to send daily updates. Repeat calls arise at predictable points, and three fixed messages cover almost all of them:

• On receipt: confirm the report and name a concrete timeframe. Not "we'll get on it", but "the engineer will be in touch within five working days to arrange an appointment".
• At every status change: engineer scheduled, part ordered, contractor engaged. One sentence per change is enough. The point isn't for the tenant to understand everything, but for them to see that things are moving.
• On delay, before the stated deadline passes: this is the message almost nobody sends, and it makes the most difference. A tenant who hears on day four that it will now be day eight shrugs it off. A tenant who has to call on day six to find that out has lost their trust in you.

Doing this manually is sustainable for a small portfolio. Beyond that, it becomes precisely the kind of work that gets left on busy days, and there are always busy days. The status change is already in your system; linking a message to it is the logical next step, whether that's through your management software, a tenant portal or a simple automatic email. The update that gets sent automatically is the only one still going out in week 40.

Start with the reports that are already overdue

You don't need to wait for a system change to see the effect. Today, pull up the list of open repair requests that have passed their promised deadline, and send those tenants one message: where the report stands and what the new deadline is. That's an hour's work, and these are exactly the reports the next repeat calls and the next poor scores will come from.

After that, you flip the order: instead of letting the call happen and then explaining, you inform before the question arises. Mrs Jansen will still call from time to time. Just not three times about the same leak.