IrisCX

By: Guillermo Salazar • 05 May 2025

Not Every Request Is a Work Order

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How bad triage and unnecessary trips are draining your maintenance budget — and your residents' patience.

It Starts With a Simple Request

The resident says the AC isn’t working. Or the toilet won’t flush. Or there’s no power in the kitchen.In most operations, that triggers a familiar sequence:
Create a work order. Dispatch a tech. Hope for the best.But here’s the reality:
In 40 to 50 percent of cases, there’s nothing actually broken.
  • AC not cooling? The filter's clogged.
  • Toilet won’t flush? Jiggle the handle, re-seat the flapper.
  • No power? The GFCI tripped. Press reset.
These are everyday issues. Ones that don’t need a truck, a vendor, or a follow-up.Yet in most portfolios, every resident request becomes a work order — without confirmation, without context, and without triage.It feels efficient. It looks responsive.
But it’s a slow bleed: on time, money, trust, and resident satisfaction.

Two Problems Wrecking Your Maintenance Ops

Across every property ops team, two operational failures cause the most damage:1. Triage that doesn’t exist
Intake teams escalate every request to a work order without verifying the problem.2. Trips that don’t need to happen
Techs and vendors are dispatched to jobs they can’t solve — or that aren’t jobs at all.
The results are predictable:
  • Vendor invoices pile up for “no problem found” calls
  • Internal techs spend more time in their truck than on tools
  • Residents burn vacation days waiting on someone who can’t fix the issue
  • Follow-ups stack up — and satisfaction drops fast
You’re not solving maintenance. You’re just reacting to it.

The Fix: Request → Confirm → Respond

High-performing operators follow a different rule:
Request. Confirm. Respond.
  • Request: The resident reports something’s off.
  • Confirm: The coordinator validates it — through structured troubleshooting, video, or photos.
  • Respond: Only confirmed issues become work orders. The right tech or vendor is dispatched with the right scope.
This small shift — adding confirmation between request and response — changes everything.Suddenly, you’re not just moving fast. You’re moving accurately.

What Good Looks Like

Here’s the goal:The coordinator gets a triaged request — with visuals, notes, and confirmed symptoms.
A work order is created with the right scope, urgency, and skill tag.
The technician is dispatched knowing exactly what they’re walking into.
They show up with the right tools, the right part, and the right training — and close the job in one visit.That’s not fantasy.
That’s what happens when triage works and unnecessary trips are eliminated.Teams operating this way report 90%+ first-visit resolution — not because their techs are superheroes, but because the work orders are real, scoped, and accurate.That’s fewer callbacks. Fewer “I waited around all day for nothing” resident complaints.
Fewer burned vendors. More time for actual repairs.

The Cost of Getting It Wrong

And It's Not Just Cost — It’s Trust

When triage fails, you don’t just waste money. You waste people’s time.
  • The resident who stays home for a four-hour service window? Still waiting.
  • The tech who drives 45 minutes to flip a breaker? Burned out.
  • The vendor who keeps showing up to nothing jobs? They stop prioritizing you.
This is how ops teams lose trust. Not all at once — but one bad trip at a time.

How Top Operators Solve It

  1. Build triage into intake
    No visuals, no dispatch. Use scripts, not guesses. Confirm before you send.
  2. Tag the work order properly
    Don’t send a generalist to a specialist job. Don’t send anyone unless you know what they’re walking into.
  3. Track repeat visits and "no issue found" jobs
    These aren’t technician problems — they’re process problems.
  4. Respect residents’ time
    A solved problem over video is better than a missed work order after a 12–4 pm window.

Three Moves You Can Make This Week

1. Audit your last 1,000 requests. How many were dispatched without confirmation?2. Pick two high-frequency issues and build a triage flow for each.3. Start tagging repeat visits — and calculate the cost of fixing the same problem twice.

Final Word

If every service request becomes a work order, your maintenance team isn’t working — it’s chasing.You’re not solving problems. You’re solving tickets.But when you fix triage, and reduce unnecessary trips, you free up your techs, protect your vendors, and make life easier for your residents.Because the real win isn’t just fewer trips.
It’s more first-time fixes — and far fewer people wondering why no one showed up on time with the right part.Ready to tighten your maintenance intake and reduce unnecessary dispatches?


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