The pandemic has technology implementations that would have taken months or years into just a couple of weeks, and it’s predicted that automation is here to stay. One example: vendor data from bot providers suggest that bots handle leads more consistently, and set appointments more reliably than humans do, without a break and at low cost. It’s hard to say no, even if the first generation or two of these products are still sorting through the difficulties of handling interpretive idioms.
With multiple providers in the market, this Multifamily Innovation Conference – Atlanta (MICA) session compares eight product offerings, with spokespeople addressing technology, purpose, natural language processing and whether bots will soon replace leasing office staff members.
Product Descriptions
Larry Gorman, President at LeaseHawk, said his product, ACE, helps the leasing time with the top-of-the-leads funnel. It distinguishes high- and low-quality lead activity and allows leasing agents to focus on high-quality activity.
Stacy Holden, Senior Director & Industry Principal at AppFolio, said that AppFolio’s AI Leasing Assistant Lisa is more than a bot. “She’s part of the leasing team designed to automate the work load and allow leasing staff to spend time on what’s more important while driving NOI,” Holden said.
Todd Katler, CEO at Anyone Home, said his company’s product, Concierge, allows customers to trade in the currency they want to use, [and its bot] provides another avenue to create customer engagement via automation or in-person.
Mat Nieves, Growth and Strategic Partnerships at MeetElise, said MeetElise replicates human conversation through natural language processing and handles more than just the conversation – it replicates tasks within its system to complete interactions.
Perry Shmukler, CTO at Diffe.rent, said his product, Lea, automates the entire leasing funnel and drives conversion rates higher while it frees up the leasing team.
Ellen Thompson, Founder of Respage, has Rentron, a bot designed to get more qualified leads and schedule tours from the website; and ResMate, an end-to-end solution that nurtures leads from the first touch, to scheduling the tour and all the way to the application.
Robert Turnbull, Founder, President & COO at BetterBot, created a bot intended to rid leasing professionals of 80 percent of the low-reward, menial tasks they are asked to perform.
Paul Yount, Industry Principal, Multifamily at Yardi, offers RENTCafeIQ, which handles as much of the top of the funnel as possible.
Product’s Purpose
The panelists mostly highlighted how their products improve performance and touted their nuanced technology, which is mostly based on artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and, a combination of guided conversations and, for some, natural language processing (NLP).
Gorman said that when ACE is used through a conversation mode with prospects, those discussions are going to sound like ones that consumers would have when they are speaking to their technology at home – like into their smart-home speakers or Alexa or Google devices. ACE leverages the text-to-voice synthesis to deliver a natural, human-like process.
Holden said Lisa is equipped to pivot during the engagement, and can remember everything the prospect has shared, no matter where or how that dialogue started. She uses NLP to respond to a question or to schedule an appointment.
“We can back-up our bot 24-7 with millions of bits of info,” Holden said. “Like Alexa, she hears and she understands based on all of the conversations going on around her. From that, she can respond in a conversational way. The customer’s interactive experience sounds the same whether it’s human or machine. If Lisa doesn’t understand, others can become involved and not make it sound purely like an automated ‘yes/no’ answer type of conversation.”
Concierge is a bot that lives off-site, and that is delivered through SMS or email. “It’s a core part of our CRM; part of our eco system,” Katler said.
He said Anyone Home decided to design knowing that everyone has screamed “Representative” into the phone during a customer service call with a bot. Concierge is a decision-tree product. Anyone Home takes 1 million inquiries a month and then programs that information into its bot and also includes a human available 24-7 to respond, achieving a 100% customer success rate.
Anyone Home is studying NLP to see where it might fail, such as when addressing sensitive topics such as fair housing, liability, security questions.
Concierge focuses on your customer’s customer. “During the pandemic, apartment communities were asking themselves: Do I do virtual tours or self-guided tours?” Katler said. “The answer is: Both. Because if you do, your conversation rate improves by 38 percent.”
Concierge doesn’t replace a human. “For one NMHC 50 client of ours, after it converted to a 24/7 human and a 24/7 bot process, their tour-to-lease rate increased by 16 percent,” Katler said. “Give consumers choices. Don’t do it one way because you can’t provide the other.”
Nieves said MeetElise uses NLP to drive human-like interactions. It allows customers to engage with what they will think is a real human being. NLP understands complex questions and gives complex answers.
Shmuckler said Diffe.rent’s AI is designed to work with the leasing staff to “wow” their prospective residents. Its AI produces insights based on thousands of interactions each day. Its bot mimics a repetitive human task and uses NLP to drive the conversation forward. It relies on sentiment analysis to determine when to hand off the prospect to a leasing professional
Thompson said Respage is designed for a leasing team that is overworked. “When you have five leasing agents who are handling 1,000 leads per month, that can be overwhelming,” she said.
She said AI gives leasing teams the chance to follow-up with prospects in a timely manner. It also enables them to work on things at the property level such as social media, reputation management and resident retention instead of through a centralized office. Its NLP integrates with its property management system to answer questions, or to hand-off the prospect to a leasing agent.
BetterBot four years ago built an NLP lexicon for multifamily, but found it had a 30 percent failure rate, one consistent with the success that premier technology such as IBM’s Watson experience.
“We use natural language, but we don’t process it,” Turnbull said. “We use intent, which made a big difference for us. It took us to a 0 percent failure rate because the consumer wasn’t confused, and our results improved 5x. We saw more completions and appointments. We are seeing many moving away from NLP to guided conversations.”
Yount at RENTCafe said guided conversations are a part of RENTCafeIQ, which works from a hybrid model that also uses NLP to allow a free-form chat and hand-off (to a community leasing agent or call center) if necessary.
Irreplaceable Humans
Yount said bots will never fully replace the leasing staff. “Leasing professionals are there to shake the customers’ hands, get people moved into their apartments -- you can’t replace that. You can lower headcount with good bots, but never replace humans totally.”
Gorman said ACE helps answer the phones, “because leasing professionals are sometimes too busy to do so because they are focused on resident experience. A renewed lease is more valuable than finding a new lease.”
Lisa won’t replace staff, Holden said. However, hiring and maintaining staff is a challenge, she added. “Younger workers want to come to a job that doesn’t ask them to do things such as simply answer phones or give quick responses to emails. [Our industry] is hiring them to close deals and to have that social aspect of the job, and engage the community.”
Nieves said, “Automation will impact how we will staff our leasing offices in the future. It’s how we’re moving. It’s more efficient. The role of AI is to work in tandem with leasing professionals. We hire them to ‘wow’ our customers because they are the ‘customer-service’ people.”
Turnbull said that bots won’t replace office head count. “There’s a 34 percent attrition rate among leasing agents due to them being overloaded,” he said. “BetterBot is designed to take the menial tasks off of their plates. Let them be humans, and be empathetic to customers. It’s working because our clients are saving 80 hours per property and signing four leases per month.”
Turnbull sees solving for multi-channel attribution as the next frontier for AI.
“We are building a 3-D, or even 4-D model around data,” he said. “Some sources are great at sending traffic, but why is that traffic not converting? Don’t just look at data coming in when you can see it through its levels of engagement: Did they become a lead, or a conversation, or a lease. We are building the tools to help measure multi-channel attribution.”
Here is the replay:
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