A Closer Look at Apartment Resident Touchpoints Since the Pandemic

CHICAGO—Priorities on how operators create and respond to touchpoints with renters and prospects have been shifting since the pandemic. New technology has unlocked opportunities to connect in different ways and to generate data to help with decision-making.

Strategies for such were discussed by Steve Hallsey, Managing Director, Wood Partners; and Jamin Harkness, Executive Vice President, The Management Group, LLC, during “The Theory of Automation: Every Touchpoint Counts,” a session held Wednesday at National Apartment Association’s Apartmentalize Conference in Chicago.

“The pandemic uncovered a lot of flaws in our industry, pointing out some weaknesses,” Hallsey said. “But the pivot happened, thanks to hard-working staff and the ingenuity of supplier partners, who we have to thank.”

He said operators found themselves in three silos: How do we get the customers through the door? What kind of technology will we need to do it? And what will we do to provide a positive resident experience?

“Addressing these things was given a lot of lip service before the pandemic, but now we are able to tackle them in a better way,” Hallsey said. “When you look at how we can now screen for ID fraud with technology, for example, this puts us about five or six years ahead of where we’d been without COVID-19.”

Getting Everyone Used to New Technology

Marketing apartments through community websites has shifted with different options such as self-scheduling and bots.

“It’s been a teaching process for our staff, and even more so, for the prospects,” Harkness said. “We’re having our team get on the phone with prospects and walk them through how to view our apartments. The quality and staying power of our apartment home and community images is better. We display a unit, and once it’s been leased, moved out of, and come back online, the media can be reused.

AI Not Replacing People

Hallsey said artificial intelligence (AI) will change how onsite staff address customer needs (such as informational inquiries), but it will never replace a person.

“I’ve known of no one in our industry who has been replaced by technology,” Hallsey said. “The management, marketing and leasing teams have plenty of other things to pay attention to, such as online reviews, ratings and the customer experience for our current residents.”

And he and others will be hiring for a different type of employee, Hallsey said.

“They must be smarter,” he explained. “They need to be able to understand data and make decisions based on it. Finding the best people will be an interesting puzzle.”

Keeping Property Tours Personal

Harkness said when his teams conduct self-guided or virtual tours, staff members record their own, personal 5- or 6-second “welcome” videos on their phones and “thank you” videos to send to prospects.

He’s also created multiple ways to instruct prospects on how to use them, “because some just aren’t there yet.” The Management Group provides an infographic and an instructional video to show the step-by-step process.

“With the self-guided tours we are conducting, we need to be careful on our bookings so that they and the in-person tours don’t overlap,” he said.

Uncovering New Benchmarking Data

The Management Group is looking to leverage new information through its processes, Harkness said.

One example is when prospects’ driver’s licenses are scanned, they can track traffic based on sex (male or female), age (birthdate), location (zip code). By looking more closely with their overall work orders, they can track how many were done for renewing residents or our move outs and how frequently, Harkness said.

Hallsey said the data he uses can disprove some common apartment management myths such as the more work orders that were done, the more likely the resident moved out.

“We see the opposite: the more the resident is engaged in their apartment home, and we tend to their needs, the more likely they will stay,” Hallsey said. “We can also track amenity use. “Just because everyone says that a large clubhouse is important, if no residents are using it, then maybe it isn’t.”

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