Ten years in, the teams behind QuadReal’s properties describe what service excellence looks like in practice: listening closely, anticipating what people need, and getting the details right.
“Creating outstanding spaces takes more than great buildings. It takes people who genuinely care.” That is how Chrystal Burns, Executive Vice President of Canadian Retail Experience, describes the difference between a property and a place. “Service excellence is at the heart of everything we do, and it’s what sets us apart.”
Ten years into QuadReal’s history, that is less an aspiration than a description of how the company works. QuadReal’s Service Excellence Playbook, shaped by more than 250 of the company’s managers, sets out six principles that guide everyday behaviour: trust, anticipation, respect, empathy, proactive communication, and pride in the work. It also defines customers broadly, as tenants, residents, visitors, partners, and each other.
“At QuadReal, we create places where people love to live, work, and connect,” says Kimberly Leriger, Vice President of National Operations, Residential. “Behind every exceptional property is a team that’s passionate about delivering great experiences for our residents, tenants, clients, and guests.”
A standard everyone shares
Service excellence at QuadReal is not the responsibility of a single team. “Everyone plays a role in raising the bar, from our corporate teams to our onsite property professionals,” says Terry Thomas, Executive Vice President of Self Storage. “We take pride in understanding what people need, anticipating what’s next, and finding the thoughtful details that make everyday experiences even better.”
That shared standard runs through how teams across the organization describe their own work. “In 10 years, we are not the same company,” says Jelena Vidic, Director of Residential Operations. “We still have the same passion. We still have the same goal: to serve our residents, to serve our communities. But we are doing it differently. And I’m proud of our community teams, how they’ve changed, how they’ve adapted.”
Listening as a discipline
One of the most consistent examples of service excellence in practice is how QuadReal gathers and acts on feedback. “The key to understanding our residents is listening, and it’s something we’ve done really well from the very beginning,” says Dean Holmes, Senior Vice President of Residential Operations. “We’ve developed a really good discipline around asking them and responding to feedback and making sure that they have a voice in what we’re doing.”
That discipline is backed by real infrastructure. QuadReal CONNECT, a dedicated customer service portal for Canadian tenants and residents, runs 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to bring calls, emails, and app requests together in one place. Occupant surveys run regularly, and QuadReal also participates in industry-benchmarked tenant and resident surveys so results can be measured against the wider market.
For Colin McKenna, Director of QuadReal CONNECT & Customer Listening, listening is also what makes a building genuinely useful. “If you’re building a space, you want it to have the amenities that people care about. You want it to be close to things that are important to them. You want a residential team that understands the importance of accessibility, that understands that families aren’t always the same. Building spaces that reflect all of that, I think, is really important. That’s a company that I want to work for.”
Anticipating what comes next
Acting on what customers say today matters, but so does anticipating what they will want next. “We know what moves the needle,” says Jennifer Balcerak, Senior Vice President of Leasing, Office East. “We are constantly learning from our clients, our residents, our tenants, and the neighbourhoods we serve. For us, it’s about creating places that reflect what matters most to the people who use them.”
In the land lease business, that thinking shapes how whole communities are designed. “We’re selling a lifestyle, not just a home at the end of the day,” says Jason Wakem, Vice President of National Operations, Land Lease. “Developing properties that truly support different generations in the same community is an amazing opportunity. As we continue to evolve as an organization, we’re going to see that realized even more in the future.”
The measure is whether people come back
For Maple Leaf Self Storage, service excellence shows up in outcomes that are hard to manufacture. For Pamela Brar, Senior Manager of Self Storage, the proof is in who sends the next customer. “What makes me the proudest of what our team has built are the relationships with our current tenants and future tenants. We often receive referrals, which is the best compliment that we can receive.”
At the portfolio level, the same principle applies to clients and partners. “Ten years in, we’re proud of the reputation QuadReal has built with our clients and communities,” says Andrew Rozycki, Senior Vice President of Investment Management. “We’re also always looking ahead: embracing new ideas, testing new approaches, and continuously finding better ways to enhance the experience for everyone who walks through our doors.”
Thousands of small moments
Ask the people closest to the work what a decade of service excellence adds up to and the answer is rarely a metric. Don Fairgrieve-Park, Executive Vice President of Operational Excellence, describes the property management and operational excellence teams working through problems, solving issues, and executing big projects. “Seeing those smiles and looking in the eyes of the people every time we do something unique. Those create a memory. There are thousands of them now, but that makes it so special.”
Liberty Pitel, a Community Manager, puts it more simply. “QuadReal is in our hearts. It’s forever. The respect, the teamwork, the collaboration. Everyone, whenever they are visiting the property, the community, we feel like one big family.”
Through 10 years of growth, the standard remains the same: understand what people need, and never stop refining how you deliver it. That is what “Excellence Lives Here” means in practice, and it is what the next decade will be built on.
Explore how QuadReal brings service excellence to life across its portfolio.
