The Resident Experience w/ Russell Markou of Quintain

Hello, my name's Adam Durrell and I'm the host of the Account Experience podcast. And you'll know that where we're actually meeting today is at the intersection of the metropolitan line of B2B account management and the Wembley Way of Customer Experience. That's why we call it Account Experience. And you know, if you're a Brit or you've been to Wembley, you'll know exactly what I'm talking about. I'll tell you more about that a bit later. And every week I get to talk to an industry who shares best practice and tips to help you develop your program. By the way, don't forget to review and share us. It'll help spread the word. By the way, if you're listening, I've got some very exciting news for followers of the Cadxperience podcast, because coming up in September is CustomerGage's own yearly event, Monetize 2022. It's the only place to be that if you're a B2B customer, experienced professional. It's going to be held in Amsterdam in the heart of the Netherlands on the September 13th to 15th. We'll have many of your favorite podcast guests there live. Get hit them, present, meet them in person, get to ask your own questions. Check out monetize22.com for more details. Today I've got the great pleasure of speaking to Russell Marku, and we're going to be diving in to a very important question, which is how what people think about the place that they live. Because today's podcast is about something we've not touched on before. It's about feedback from people who rent. What is more important than the voice of the tenant? Well, that's what Russell's going to cover today. And Russell's the head of operations at Quintain Living. It's the management and operations platform of Quintain's build to rent business. It's effectively a platform that designs, manages, owns and operates homes for renters. And he's been responsible for this enormous development in northwest London that was previously home to the Empire Exhibition. In 1924. It had an Olympic pool which hosted in my lifetime, the Harlem Globetrotters, Holiday on Ice and many huge concerts. And it's got the largest stadium in the uk, Wembley Stadium, the home of Olympics soccer, Live Aid, and most recently this week, the Red Hot Chili Peppers on the London tour. I'd like to welcome Russell to the podcast. Hello, Russell. How you doing?

Hey, Adam. I'm great, thank you. Great introduction. And just an FYI, the Harlem Globetrotters still do perform at the arena here in Wembley.

You'll also have to correct me, it's probably not called Wembley Stadium anymore. What's the official name of the stadium these days?

Well, the stadium is actually still called Wembley Stadium, but the arena, which is where you would have seen the Globetrotters, is known as the OVO arena right here in Wembley Park. Yeah, it recently changed from the SSE Arena.

I'd love to hear more about it. Maybe that's something we can cover a bit. Listen, why don't we get into this. First of all, a fascinating story that you've got, but so why don't you tell us a little bit about the company Quintain and color in some of the details that I left out about what you guys are doing.

Yeah. So as you said, I mean, we are primarily a platform that provides homes for renters. And in the UK the sector is known as BTR or Build to Rent. And it's hugely successful so far, asset class and basically homes for renters which have a little bit more than what normal renters would expect. This is something that has been operating in the US for many, many years and it's known as multifamily. We are known as Built to Rent. As I mentioned, finding the right title for the sector has been a bit of a challenge because we need to be able to articulate exactly what it is. So Built to Rent is kind of where we've landed in the sector. But basically our apartments are really, really carefully designed, taking feedback from customers on design throughout their life cycle with us to help, you know, develop our designs going forward, always with the renter in mind. But we have to also strike the balance of managing the asset as well. So from an operational expense, we have a vested interest in making sure the materials get designed in are something that strikes a balance between good design and also something that stands the test of time. So the whole life cycle costing of the product, so to speak. So we used to be Quintane, used to be a Build to sell developer. And then when we were taken over by Lone Star In 2015, they basically saw the opportunity for us to accelerate our master plan, which is effectively 7,000 homes across Wembley park estate surrounding, you know, in the shadow of the stadium. It's everyone will know as previously as car park area. And so what we did was we accelerated the construction and built everything pretty much all at the same time, which has led to where we are today with 3,255 homes operating around about just over 80% occupied now. So some of our buildings are still in lease up, but our buildings, which is spread over nine separate buildings, all within walking distance, they're all designed differently so that you could live in a family style accommodation which has, you know, amenity space or social spaces which cater for kids. In wine development we've got pirate ship, a kid's playroom, you know, a paddling pool, we've got allotments. So there's a whole host of things there for families. And in other buildings we've got New York style loft apartments with exposed services, concrete ceilings. Really, really, really different. And what we're finding is that this, this choice keeps people here longer. So if they get fed up with one type of design, they move to the next building, they can experience something different. So it's really, really something that we look at long term. So the operational cost is thought about early. But caption the, the residence requirements and giving residents choice and giving them everything they need in one building basically so work from home facilities and so on.

So that's amazing. Let me. There's a lot to unpack then. I just, I just. So, so this is really interesting for me. I mean I, you know, I lived in the uk, I've been a renter and a homeowner in the uk, but you know, all the times I rented a place it was either done, I can put it amateurishly or badly. You are bringing something new to the sector, which is a corporate way of looking at this. But you've also got this where you've got customer experience at the heart of it. Right. And this is, and this for me is really interesting because this to me, to be, to me seems to be completely transformational. This is, you've got a highly, you know, effectively mobile class of people who can live anywhere these days and you're building what seems to be a small town on the edge of London. So what was the thinking behind.

You.

Know, you know, making sure that you've got happy customers on site? Can you tell us a little bit more about your philosophy about how you went into this?

Yeah, so just a little bit about my background to sort of put into context. So I, before I joined Quintain Quintain Living, I was in the hotel sector and before that I was in construction and project management. So I've got quite a broad range of experience and the one thing I learned from the hotel sector is just the importance of customer service, but genuine custom service. So not just we tick a box customer service, it has to come from the heart and it has to come from the top down. And that's really important in our sector. And actually the hotel I used to work for was a Hilton hotel here in Wembley park which Quintain used to own. And I used to meet them every month and talk about the results and hotel performance. And then that's how I was introduced to Quintane Living when I was approached by an opportunity in this new sector. So I know the importance and value of customer satisfaction from a retention perspective. And that's really, really important in our sector because retention is key because providing a great experience, consistent experience and it doesn't have to be the most mind blowing customer service. What it needs to be is consistent and great communication is really, really important. It's one of the things that always lets us down is poor communication. There's nothing more frustrating than raising a complaint or raising an issue and then having no response just falls on deaf ears it seems. So it's managing communication effectively is what's really, really key. That's what great customer service is about, right? Because you're in people's homes, you don't want to be overwhelming them with activities and communications because they switch off. This is their homes outside of work. So from hotels I've really, really enjoyed the Net Promoter method of measurement and performance and growth in terms of customer satisfaction. And it's not something that exists in this sector because we're a new sector. It's still very immature and we're still learning so much. And whilst we are a little bit at the forefront of most of our peers in the sector, you know, everyone's learning a lot very, very fast. And one thing I like is Net Promoter Score. And I've had Net Promoter Score in place now with you guys I think for about five years now. But the to date we've, we've been doing it manually. So they've been going out inconsistently. But only from the beginning of this year was was it automated into our CRM. So now what we're seeing is these surveys going out systematically to every customer at the same stage in their life journey with us. So we send out three surveys at the moment. So one two weeks after they move in, one midterm, so six months in and then one seven days before they move out. So every customer is getting the same invitation to the same survey. So this gives us a real insight equally into everyone's experience. And you know, having launched this into the sector, I mean first and foremost is customer satisfaction at different stages of the customer journey is really, really important. As mentioned, and then also capturing and understanding the changes in the customer experience. So basically right now, so between June and October, I would say is what we've discovered. Last year is our peak leasing season. And I say last year because we've been building a lot of product and it's all come to materialize in the last sort of two years. But then we had Covid, so it slowed down the lease up process. So last year was the first year of absolute, you know, pent up demand coming through. And last year, typically in September, we saw 500 move ins. Yeah, that's not even including the move outs. There's a lot of, lot of movement going on there. So we're sort of bracing ourselves for this year. And so it's really good for these surveys to see the change in score depending on the time of year you move in. So not just around the stage of your journey, but also the time of the year that you move in. Is it quiet period? Is it a busy period? And that's all great insights. And from that we can, we can further enhance and develop our strategies going forward. We don't know it all right now. We really don't. And we're still learning. And the good thing about the platform we use with you is that we can create questions very quickly. If we want to tweak a survey, we can. If we think we've missed something and we want to create, get some different feedback, we can literally jump into the platform, make that change, and it's live straight away. And that's really, really important to us at that point. We have that dynamic ability in our flexibility in our platform. And you guys allow us to do that, which is great. Like I said, we're still learning, so we're still learning the questions for you to answer. Right. But then having the NPS score as a KPI is brilliant because again, it's just something for the team. And the team love it because they can see a visual indicator basically comparing each building. And it's a nice bit of friendly competition where they can scare us. Scare. Sorry, it's not the wrong word. They can compare. Maybe they're scared by some of the results.

But I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna slow you down on that because there's a look. Russell, this is fantastic information. I'm so curious to unpack this.

Go for it.

So let's go back slowly a bit. So this is a new sector. First of all, customer feedback in this sector is also new. Yes, but what were some of the early Things that you, you were, you were getting back from them. I mean, you've been running it for some time now. What was the first piece of feedback you got where you went?

Ah, well, in fact, the first, the first feedback we would receive when we first launched this when the sector was really, really young was still wannabe elation. They love it, absolutely love it. And you know, so that was great. Let's continue doing what we're doing. But as we scaled, you know, delivering that sort of bespoke, sort of boutique hotel style service is kind of a little bit trickier now because we've scaled. Right. And our headcount can't scale with this. Right. When we were absolutely a small startup, we would have, we'd probably be a bit heavy on the headcount as we were ramping up the business. But obviously we have to stabilize to a, you know, a sensible sort of staff ratio. And so therefore what we learned was not to sort of go all out on the service side. Manage expectations is really, really key. So early on in the introduction of mps, the scores we were seeing were, let me say it's like 70 was our NPS score, which is ridiculously high. But getting our board to understand that, listen, don't get excited by this score, it's not something that's going to stand the test of time. And there was a lack of understanding from people in the UK on Net Promoter score, certainly in the resi sector. So educating them was a challenge. So every month when we'd have to report the Net Promoter scores, it would be like 70 or 75 different states or the global, which is the combined surveys. And then if it would drop down to 68, it would be like, what's going on? Why have we dropped?

As you said, what you're doing is you're tweaking, you're optimizing the service for the tenants. Obviously they don't want to be paying through the roof for stuff that they're not going to use anyway. So it makes perfect sense to bring it into expectations. But it sounds like there was some calibration that you were able to do or at least some learnings from that to get the service. So that was on the score. But what about the comments? What about the, you know, what was behind that? What were some of the aha moments that you were getting from the tenants as they were giving you feedback?

Yeah, it was mainly around communication and what that's led to is us creating processes, which is really, really helpful. So for example, I raised a maintenance case and I'm not hearing anything back and this is frustrating me. And quite rightly again, going back to my communication point earlier, people just need to know, they finally tell them it's going to be done on this date. So it could be that that's going to take. It's not a priority. That's going to take seven days.

But they.

It then correct, you're managing their expectations, otherwise they go, okay, seven days seems a bit long, but okay, I can work around that rather than, you know, just, just silence. So that was one of the, that, I mean that's quite a generic statement because. But that was applicable to most of the feedback. It helped us shape our processes. The feedback then the questions obviously evolved as we stabilized the business a lot more in terms of holding resident events. And you know what, because we own the whole estate, there is a lot of retail units. My colleague is in a retail team of Quintain. They are responsible for acquiring new operators for our retail spaces below our buildings. So we've got a great opportunity to ask people, what would you like to see as a retail offering in and around the estate? And that gave us some great insights into things like, I mean surprisingly, I don't know if you can guess what would be the most requested sort of.

I'm gathering around on lim and say Starbucks.

No, we've got plenty of Starbucks here. It's actually a hardware store, a pharmacy. So yeah, so pharmacy is the big one. So now obviously that helps our retail team target those areas and we have a pharmacy coming very soon. Yeah.

Oh, sorry.

No, no, I was just saying there's lots more small detail nuances based on feedback that we adapt and change in the surveys as well.

That's actually what I'd like to pick up because you said you said something and it went very fast and I was. You said about comparing the different buildings. I think you said you had nine buildings. Let's talk about segmentation for a second. You must really think about this. You're segmenting the buildings and you presumably able to segment by resident type and the sort of service. So again, I'm curious to understand how you've been able to extract some learnings from that information.

Yeah, so our buildings are designed with a certain demographic in mind from the outset. So the one building we have called Canada gardens, which is 743 apartments and it's pretty much designed for families. But what we haven't had the ability to do yet is to extract the data from customer gauge to drill down into that level of detail by demographic and the reason for that is because as I mentioned earlier, we've only just integrated into our CRM. So really the historic data prior to this year. Whilst it was great to get us to a place where we are now, we can't rely on that data because it's been served inconsistently. So this year is our first year where we've got consistent data, a really good qualified sort of customer stage delivery of surveys and feedback that we can then look forward in the next years doing a comparison year on year and then also drilling into the data to see what's working and what's not for different developments and which demographics are more responsive in the surveys as well. So at the moment I can't sort of go into too much more detail on that because we haven't done the analysis just yet and I'm not going to be doing that over the next few months as we head into peak, but really excited by the end of the year to sort of look back and get some more analysis on that data.

This episode of the Count Experience podcast is sponsored by CustomerGage, the leading B2B experience software that ties revenue to your experience data in real time to help you make better account centric decisions that drive revenue growth. Quick question. What do you guys think is the number one reason B2B experience programs fail? Believe it or not, it's lack of C Suite buy in. And in CustomerGage's research with MIT, they found the quickest way to align yourselves with the C suite is to actually align with what they care about most, which is revenue. That's why CustomerGage is literally built from the ground up to maximize and track the revenue contribution from your experience program in real time. Companies like dhl, Anheuser Busch, Heineken, uh, yeah, we get a good amount of free beer. OneLogin, Iron Mountain, HR Block, SuperOffice and SugarCRM are all already using Customer Gauge to maximize their growth by tying their programs to revenue. And with over $10 billion worth of account revenue actively being managed in Customer Gauge, yeah, that's billion with a B. They're by far the leaders in B2B for this type of thing. But maybe even more interesting, we found that once you get alignment with that C suite, the needs of these B2B practitioners or the program champions are evolving too. And such a complex account environment, it can be really tough to measure and act on feedback quickly across multiple departments, divisions or even locations. Luckily, Customer Gauge has you covered there as well with account native features that easily help you not only measure the feedback from multiple stakeholders in an account. But act on that feedback in real time. Because at the end of the day, if you're not empowering your frontline staff with the right insights to address customer issues, you're going to be dealing with a churn issue. It's not a matter of if, it's really a matter of when. CustomerGage helps you distribute this experience data across your entire organization, regardless of department, regardless of location, regardless of division, all in real time. No manual spreadsheets or a big team of analysts are needed. CustomerGage's goal is to help you create an entire company company committed to best serving your accounts. And that's a powerful thing. If you want to see customer gauge in action, go ahead and check out CustomerGauge.com and get a demo of account experience today. You won't regret it.

Thinking back over the last couple of years, which I mean, had an effect on all of us through the lockdown, what were some of the learnings you got through as you went? You navigated the difficult months of, of COVID because I'm guessing there was a huge change, people working from home, probably a big change in the sort of population over time of the, of the estate. What were you learning as people went through that experience?

Well, I mean, there's more learnings in person than through the survey because we pretty much, we didn't really send a lot of surveys out during that period because we weren't getting many people moving in. People were staying and we were dealing. We were quite thin on the ground with staff and we had a hybrid situation going on. So delivering surveys wasn't really top of our agenda, but more so was more important was actual interaction with people at a safe distance, of course. And we implemented some specific processes to allow residents to still benefit from the facilities in the building. So good example being gyms and social spaces. Now, basically a lot of people use social spaces to work from home, so they're not cooped up in their apartments all day long, generally speaking. So that was really important. During COVID a lot of our competitors were completely closing social spaces down, but we came up with a process where we could keep them open by booking appointments so residents could book, say, one household at a time in certain social spaces. And we did the same with the gyms as well. We kept gyms open, but with a very strict process in place. When, when we were legally allowed to. When, when gyms were completely closed, obviously we didn't close, but when we were allowed to, we had a proper process. In place to allow residents to continue using them. But we did many other things, you know, parcel deliveries to doors and all that sort of stuff. But it's not really related to the survey. We just, we just reacted to what we needed to. We put staff up inside in apartments so we could maintain the operation so they wouldn't have to travel and be exposed to any. To the coronavirus. Yeah. So we did lots of things on the ground to keep people there and to keep them feeling safe and secure, but also to allow them to get away from their home. Because it was quite frustrating. Right, if you being cooped up in an apartment for so long. I mean, fortunately they all have balconies, but we're also blessed with big communal gardens as well. So we have a little bit of advantage over and above many others who weren't in such a good situation. Yeah. So that's pretty much how what we're doing today.

It's really good to think of the way that you cared for the residents. I think this is fascinating because as I said, I think this sector really has this need for customer experience. And, you know, your experience coming from the hotel business, I think is really impactful on this. You know, you're thinking of people as honored guests rather than just people who pay the rent every month. So how do you see the rental sector evolving? I mean, as you look across the UK or Europe or, you know, do you see this evolving further, this sort of customer centric approach? Are you just out on your own?

No, no, no. We're not on our own at all. There's other. There's a platform, actually a reviews platform which is similar to TripAdvisor from hotels, but it's called Home Views and that is an online review site. So as a resident, you can go on there and you can, you can rate your landlord and it covers a few sort of management facilities, apartment or lots of different questions. They're pretty good, they're quite detailed and you have to be verified as a resident to be pushed out there in the public realm. So it is that platform. I remember I met the guys from Home views probably about 5 years ago now and they've really grown strength to strength. So that customer centric approach is not going away, nor should it. You know, retention is really key and, you know, the cost of churn, if you like, and people leaving is significant. So you want happy customers, you want them to stay because it has business benefits. It's quite simple. Happy customers equals. Equals revenue. So if the customers are happy, then we're Happy and our stakeholders are happy. But this sector is emerging massively. The BTR or build to Rent sector in the uk. There's a lot of competition coming, there's a lot of pipeline and a lot of investment from around the world because it's a very, very secure. So far anyway, being a very secure asset class and it certainly held well.

During COVID and there's a shortage of affordable homes or even any homes.

Any homes.

So this is obviously an area that, that has plenty of legs, I suppose, to think about it. What's interesting, I completely get the thing about retaining customers and keeping them for long, but the other thing that we're quite hot on at the moment, I'm holding out Fred's book for that, which is called Winning On Purpose. Fred Reichel's new book, Top book of.

The year, this one.

Yeah, you've got it as well. There you go. Snap. You know, what Fred talks about is the earned growth about referrals. So how much are you thinking about having happy tenants referring their friends or relatives to come into the business? Is that something that's really taken off in your business?

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we offer a referral scheme, so where a resident refers to friend or family or anyone to come and join, they get. Not only is the new customer coming in, get a thank you, but so does the existing resident. And that's proved really, really successful. Referrals are really important to us, which further underpins the need for, you know, providing great customer service. Right. So they're confident doing that.

I don't also think that's your benefit because you, because you're a corporation, presumably you have extra inventory that you can bring in if that happens. You're a small landlord, it's great to be referred, but, you know, it's like you can't fill that up. I'm guessing this is something that could be, you know, it's a huge growth area for you, right?

As in referrals generally. Yeah, yeah, of course, yeah, absolutely. It's seen the last few months have shown quite a. Quite a big growth in referrals and it is an important part of our, of our model. So. Yeah, absolutely agree. It is a growing thing, but that's only successful if you can deliver on the customer service.

Yeah, I really.

And the product, the product that we provide, if you go onto our website, Queensland Living, and look at our products, you can see it's amazing. You know, we have some amazing apartments, great amenity spaces, but it's nothing without customer service. You know, it's really, really nothing. If you don't provide great customer service or consistent customer service, those things won't really stand the test of time.

I love the way that you're describing it because, you know, if I think about the rental market, I think it's just bricks and mortar. It's just a place to live. But what you're talking about is wrapping around it a real experience that goes beyond that.

Yeah, absolutely.

I love to hear that. So if you were to look into your, you know, crystal ball or your plans over the next few years and please don't reveal any commercial secrets, but how do you, how do you think you're going to evolve your, your, your business, especially as a result of listening to the feedback from customers?

Well, I mean, as far as the business is strong, we'll continue. I mean, Wembley park is, is a certain size. You know, we've, we've, we're lucky to own the land around the stadium. And you know, we, we have, As I said, 3255 apartments live now with another just under 400 going live, adding into that from November.

Yeah.

And then we're just going into the ground now on another two and a half thousand units with literally just out the window here. I can see the cranes and diggers, but, you know, that's, that's pipeline is strong for the next few years in terms of construction and offering homes. But where we'd like to see our business get is, you know, obviously as a brand, as a, as a management platform that can manage assets for other owners basically and spread the love and, you know, continue, you know, raising the standard and the bar for service and quality.

Okay, so that's really interesting for me. So you're going, it seems like your current plan is really to develop the Wendy site there and you, if I've got my calculations right, you can almost double the number of units you've got there. That's incredible, by the way.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Once you've got that, that's almost like your demonstration model. But then you've got the, the platform that, then you can go out to other, I don't know, what do you call them, you know, new, new sites, but then offer the Quintain service around that, I guess. And I'm thinking from what I know about the hotel trade, that's also common in the hotel trade, isn't it, where you have a building and then. Can you, can you, can you talk a little bit about that from your experience about how that works for our.

Listeners from, from a hotel Perspective.

Yeah. Well, I go. Because I'm guessing what you're doing is you're thinking about that also for the rental sector.

Yeah, I mean, it's not, it's not an area. It's our business development team who are. Business development team who are looking at opportunities elsewhere and what that might look like. And we're in the very early stages of, you know, being in a position to, to put ourselves out there as a viable operator. And we're still quite young in our, in our, in our sector and still developing our process and our platform. So, yeah, I mean, whilst we own all these assets here, you know, if we, if we go outside of this, we won't own them, but we'll be operating in a very different model. But yeah, that's, that's all I can say at this stage. But it's just, I think, But I think that's enough.

I think it's because if you can refresh your memory about how the hotel business works, that's often, that's quite common in the hotel business, isn't it, that you have different.

Yeah, you'd have a management agreement or you'd have owner. Owner operators. I think the hotel. It's been seven years now since I've been in hotels, but when I was leaving, when I left the hotel sector, most of the hotel operators wanted to be asset light and basically be operators more so. So I guess that's the way that's going.

So the building, the building's owned by somebody and then. Then the brand comes in with their team to, to operate it.

Yeah, basically.

Fascinating. Oh, no, this is really, you know, what I think is really interesting about this, Russell, is that you're at the cutting edge of living in the 21st century, really for many people especially I talk to, you know, even my kids, they're like, oh my God, Dad, I don't know if we can ever afford to buy a place. But you're offer, you're able to offer something that really is home. And yeah, the premium experience and it's new.

I mean, when we first opened, people were asking, what's the catch? They didn't understand it, they didn't get it. And that was only seven years ago, maybe six years, six and a half years ago. But I have to say that customer expectations have gone up a lot since then and I think most sectors are seeing that now and where demands from customers have increased. I don't know if you're seeing that, Adam, in your, in your world with your, with your partners and companies, but Certainly my ex colleagues in hotels and food and beverage outlets and retail are certainly seeing a shift in expectations and demands.

Well, people, from my experience, people, the companies that we talk to, recognize that customer experience works for them in several ways. First of all, it allows them to have better commercial relationships with the customers that they have. And that means that it gets them through hard times, but also helps them through good times as the customers spend more with them. Second, and then the customers recommend others. That's a huge stream of revenue. We're talking about referrals. But also it's the, you know, you'll know this, that the, the better service you have, the more premium your product is. And that's, that's really important these days, I think. So that's what we learned from this. This is a way to, to elevate profits if you, if you, and that's not a dirty word, that's just a way of.

No, no, no, no, returning it.

So I think, I think you really, you're really in an interesting space and I really appreciated you sharing about, about this. I mean, I'm just curious because I am from northwest London myself and you know, I know Wembley incredibly well. So this, this is before we, before we leave the subject. What is it, what is the magic of being on the Wembley Estate? Give people, the tenants there. What. Can you describe what the, what the atmosphere is like for tenants?

Yeah, firstly, we don't use a T word. I'm sorry, I forgot to clarify that. Residents.

Okay, that's already, that's a good learning.

That's fine. The legal definition is. You're quite right, it's Stellans. But yeah, we found some residents. So. Wembley Park. Wow. What can I say? I mean, you know it from, from your days. And when I first came here in 2013, I was working at the Hilton London Wembley. And when I first came here, there was the Brent Civic center and the stadium and the arena and lots of car parks. And over the years I've seen this transform massively. So it's actually a destination now. You know, we've got the London Designer outlet shopping outlets with so many restaurants and great shopping outlets in there. It's got all of our residential buildings now. It's got a huge park as well with water features which people can interact with. And then obviously you've got the, the stadium and the arena and that, those, those venues themselves really do drive some real, real, you know, a real buzz. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, right now, Ed Sheeran's playing tonight again. And you know, I know When I'm leaving this evening, I'll be walking against the sea of traffic coming up from Wembley park tube station. But it's just, it's hard to sort of. It's hard to sort of articulate. But being here in those moments, just, it's just so nice. And what the feedback we get from our residents is, you know, when this, when there's an event on, sitting on the balcony and listening to the crowd. If it's especially a concert. Yeah. And the fireworks at the end, it's just a real good buzz and they feel privileged to leave to live here. You know, it's just, it's just such a varied, diverse location, you know, certainly with the different, diverse fans coming for different venue, different events. But obviously with that comes, you know, challenges that we have to manage in terms of the operation and keeping our residents safe and giving them exclusive access to their buildings. Because I don't know if you've seen the plan of Wembley park, but, or seen footage recently, but our buildings are right on. I'm looking at it right now.

I can really see it looks fantastic.

I mean, it is, but it's, but it's, you know, but that buzz of, you know, of the people coming to the area, you know, our residents seem to really enjoy that and they know what they're, they're buying into when they move in. There's a big stadium that they can't miss it and they work around the crowd and we communicate really, really well. We put maps up in the lifts every before every event to show the roads that are closed and how to navigate the crowds and stuff like that. And yeah, it works really, really well. It's just such a, such a buzzing area, you know, it really is. And I think there's, you know, a lot of history around Wembley and I think once people, certainly from when I was in the hotel here, once people knew where it was. Once people came to Wembley park, then they wouldn't forget it, you know, in a positive way. Now they're here. I mean, it has a history of just being a giant car park, but now it's a unique neighborhood within its own. Right.

I think that's a really good thing to emphasize. And in a way that's unique. I mean, Wembley is a world famous destination. That's not an experience you can easily replicate. But what I love about the Way is you've got a process to communicate to your residents about what's going on. You're taking their feedback, you're acting on it. I think that's really, I'm really impressed with the stuff that you guys are doing at Quintain and I really appreciate hearing about this. Russell, before we go, I'd love to get is there one tip you'd like to pass on to the listeners that you've learned in your long, long career of serving customers? Is there anything that you've. A word of wisdom from Wembley.

Oh, gosh, we should primed me for this question. There's just so much. I could talk all night, but ultimately, you know, you're nothing without your team and you have to read that the culture has to be driven from the top and, but, but genuinely from the heart. It's emotional. It really has to be emotional connected to, to, you know, all of your customers and residents. We come to work here, but we're working in people's homes and that's really, really important. They're the people are paying rent with their own hard earned money. It's not like hotels where the corporate account and you know, during the week those, those, those guests would be, wouldn't either be that bothered. It was being picked up. That tab was being picked up by someone else. With us, it's more emotional and we always need to be true to ourselves and to our customers and always fail forward and don't be afraid of making mistakes. We are a new sector. We are going to continue to make mistakes, but we're going to improve off the back of them. So not being too proud to admit when we've got it wrong is really, really important. Really culturally for your team. At every level, it's okay to make a mistake, share it, celebrate it and learn and grow from it. That's a long version.

No, I love it. I love it. It's about, you know, you use the word heart several times and home, they say home is where the heart is. Yeah, home is where the heart is. And you're putting humility in there as well. Because I love what you're saying about learning from customers. I think that builds trust and experience. I think that sounds great. Russell, thank you so much for sharing that. And if people want to find out about Quintane living, where would they go to?

They could go to our website, quintainliving.com and you'll find all the information you need to there.

Super. Russell, thank you so much for spending time with us today. Thanks very much for the account experience podcast.

Pleasure. Thanks, Adam. Sam.