About a year ago, I invested in Urban Flats Toronto and became a part-time member of our team, continuing my mainstream career as a tech investor. We provide temporary living in Toronto mainly for corporate travelers, but we also serve other visitors to our fair city. It is a business that I knew a reasonable amount about since my sister Lee-Anne co-founded our predecessor firm in 2009 and she and her team have built a strong presence in the Toronto market. I’d also had first-hand experience with temporary living quarters while serving as interim leader for a tech company and while traveling for pleasure around the world.
The biggest surprise for me is the tremendous sense of pride I feel as part of this growing customer-focused business. Here are my observations, likely through my tech industry lens, one year into this small business adventure:
1) Successful customer-focused businesses are led from the top and that culture permeates the organization. One trait I often see in customer-focused CEOs is an obsession with the many details that make up the whole customer experience. I’ll admit that this can sometimes appear economically irrational. For Lee-Anne, her team jokes about her never ending shopping trips to continually refurbish our flats so they look and feel fresh. Here’s one of my favourite Urban Flats, the Emery, located at 300 Front Street.
We also note Lee-Anne’s obsession with systems and processes that check and double-check that everything will proceed smoothly during a guest’s stay. I now fully appreciate Lee-Anne’s ability to talk for hours in specific and loving detail about the products and services used to deliver our high quality temporary living experience and I’ve seen strong evidence that our guests appreciate our efforts.
2) To my pleasant surprise, Urban Flats Toronto makes it very easy for customers to get hold of us. We publish our phone number 416-656-5858 prominently on our website. This is a refreshing change from many of the on-line and tech-driven businesses I encounter who often discourage live interaction. We give prospective customers the choice to reach us by phone, Skype, email or other social media links. Our operations team, led by Tara, prides itself on being responsive to calls and inquiries. We score high marks from customers and business partners in this regard, resulting in repeat and referred customers making up a large part of our customer base. We are very grateful to our guests and are always happy to chat with them and welcome them back on their next visit. You can read what some of our customers are saying about us here.
3) We attract the right talent with front-line hospitality industry experience and our small but mighty customer-focused team of Lee-Anne, Tara and Jeffrey accomplish amazing things. I’m impressed by their ability to develop personal connections with our customers and ensure that we meet each customer’s specific temporary living needs while they are staying in our flats.
4) Finally, I’m proud to be part of a family-owned and operated business with customer-focus as its mantra. It is great fun to work alongside my sister and father and discuss Urban Flats Toronto around the Sunday dinner table. For years, my venture capital industry bias to not invest in family-owned businesses kept me away from this great opportunity. I’m very glad that I decided to break from the crowd and enjoy this experience. And I’m happy to report that I have received lots of support from my tech community friends and colleagues MaRSDD and JOLTCo who have assisted my transition into the world of on-line marketing and sales tools, blogging and SEO – special thanks to @cowboytweets for your marketing slogan assist, pictured here on our in-suite grocery bag.
If you’d like to learn more about our business or to arrange a stay, please contact us here or give us a call at 416-656-5858.
