A Year of Better Service

What BingStudent has done most differently this year than any prior is more accurately identifying value for the students it serves. The company has defined value in the student housing market, or any housing market for that matter, as providing more than what any competitor could in product and services combined in order to enhance the lifestyle and return on the dollar spent for the student. The investors backing BingStudent’s commendable campaign; in providing the ultimate combination of maximum affordability, indulgence and most importantly superior service to the student housing market, have made substantial progress in the 2015-2016 scholastic by including priceless services to students that can bring them to enjoy greater lifestyles both now and in the future. It is key to understand that BingStudent's approach to student housing has evolved tremendously since its inception; focusing on tangible product at first and then the services attached to it, that differentiate its offerings and create exponentially more value all together, afterwards.

It makes sense to discuss the differentiation of BingStudent's physical product, its housing, first as it is what will affect the students in the present and add or subtract from their current quality of living. What the company understands as not executing the best possible housing service, not delivering the most value to the resident, is blindly building apartments or homes, that guise themselves as luxury accommodations, with makeshift maintenance staff attached to them; a business practice that some downtown developers have followed. Rather, BingStudent finds it seems more appropriate to follow a model that promotes proactive action and devotion to the properties such as investing in superior technology windows, installing energy efficient heating systems, and ensuring that any and all labor is done with pedigree.

Furthermore, BingStudent evolved and solidified its membership in the digital age this year through the collection, management and analysis of structured data from its customers. Through the use of cloud technology, such as Dropbox, the company was able to consolidate the inquiries it had received and approach each dilemma it was tasked with more efficiently. This technological advantage combined with a more hands on approach from the investors of the company allowed BingStudent to uphold its primary pillar of business, resident satisfaction, to the highest degree.

Specifically, by having residents email their inquiries to Info@BingStudent.com the management is able to log every request and track the time it took to complete it or bring it further down the process of completion. Once the information is logged it becomes permanent and all employees have access to view it, its progress and what else is required to satisfy the inquiry. Through this approach, each of the employees and maintenance members became able to offer their perspective on each step, allowing for a collusion of ideas and greater total efforts resonating from the company to the residents’ requests.

Moreover, BingStudent has become able to identify the bottlenecks in its response systems and to directly target them for improvement in order to hasten any and all services to its residents; without having to rely on the word of Binghamton’s third party service companies. Thus in 2015-2016, management became capable of correcting any potential incidents at its locations or responding to resident requests before they even occurred.

However, the most important asset that BingStudent began to leverage this past year was not its technological investments, but rather the expertise, knowledge and experience that its founding investors carry.

Management's first step in the process of providing a better service was beginning to employ the services of students themselves in order to provide them with an excellent business administration learning experience. A side product was the students collaborating with management in effort to identify the most important aspects of student's lives and how the company could cater to those necessities in order to provide bar none the best product possible.

The interns focused on allocating assets for the company during the work day but they also secretly allocated time to applying to all sorts of firms and positions during every second of free time they found. The street executives noticed their actions and gave guidance to the interns; explaining to them in depth what exactly it was that the recruiters from these big companies were after, easing stress from their job searches and in essence providing a better quality of life.

Almost immediately afterwards, management began to offer complimentary career advising to its residents who were looking to develop themselves professionally and to those who were seeking advice as to how to present themselves as valuable assets to established companies in all sorts of sectors and industries. This consultation will remain as a free feature available to all BingStudent residents for the time being, truly making BingStudent housing “Smart Living.”

What needs to be understood now is that BingStudent's team is able to offer something much more valuable as a product to the students than just luxury hard wood floors, fully furnished rooms and free off-street parking at every location. BingStudent is making the transition to a student services company rather than just a student housing company by offering a better future through complimentary career advising and consulting in conjunction with the exceptional housing.

I myself, a Masters of Business Administration student concentrated in Finance, was able to land an internship at Oppenheimer & Co this past summer in the private client division. Management consulted with me and advised me as to what would be most impactful to the recruiters every step of the interview process. The consultation usually took place later in the evening through voice conversation over the phone, allowing me to immediately express any concerns I had regarding preparation and any technical analysis that I and the executives anticipated from the interviewers.

Management is now in the process of planning a designated forum of discussion between the experts and the residents to most effectively provide consultation, but all current resident requests for career consultation can and will be answered via email or phone call.

To close out the year BingStudent acquired its twenty first location, 51 Main Street, which sits on the corner of Oak and Main. The home’s interior hasn’t been completed as of yet. As of today it features three floors of livable space including two duplex apartments, each with its own spiral staircase and the renaissance-romantic era design that many of our residents have become so familiar with.

The BingStudent team welcomes the downtown housed class of 2016-2017. We're eager and enthusiastic for you all to experience that which we have worked so hard to achieve thus far.