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. Plenty is happening with her request: the engineer is booked in, the part has been ordered. She just doesn't know that. For her, it's been silent since she reported the leak, and silence feels like nothing is happening.

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

This isn't a matter of carelessness or a busy week. It's information asymmetry. You can see exactly where the request stands in your system: booked in, waiting for a part, passed on 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 fix that. Only structural updates do.

Status updates on repair requests matter more than speed

The instinctive response is to invest in faster processing. Understandable, but the data point elsewhere. In the Aedes benchmark 2025, the average rating for the repair process rose to 8.1, and Aedes explicitly notes that contact with staff proves decisive for a positive experience. Not the turnaround time, but the contact. A tenant who knows where their request 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 reports on complaints for the second half of 2025 show that half of all complaints concern poor landlord conduct, with poor communication specifically named alongside maintenance defects. Tenants who feel ignored don't quietly swallow their frustration. They report it to the Woonbond, to the local council, or they show up as a poor score in your next huurdersoordeel (tenant satisfaction rating).

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

Three moments that catch almost all repeat calls

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

• On receipt: confirm the request and give a concrete timeframe. Not "we're on it", but "the engineer will contact you within five working days to arrange an appointment".
• At every status change: engineer booked in, part ordered, contractor engaged. One sentence per change is enough. The point isn't that the tenant understands every detail, but that they can see it's moving forward.
• On delay, before the stated deadline passes: this is the message almost nobody sends, and it's the one that makes the most difference. A tenant who hears on day four that it will now be day eight simply shrugs it off. A tenant who has to call on day six to find that out themselves has lost trust in you.

Doing this by hand is manageable for a small portfolio. Beyond that, it becomes exactly the kind of work that gets pushed aside on busy days, and busy days are always there. The status change is already recorded 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 automated email. The update that goes out automatically is the only one still being sent in week 40.

Start with the requests 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 a single message: where the request stands and what the new deadline is. That's an hour's work, and these are precisely the requests that the next repeat calls and the next poor ratings come from.

After that, you flip the sequence: instead of letting the call happen and then explaining, you inform before the question arises. Mrs Jansen will still call sometimes. But not three times about the same leak.