Leasing Automation: Self-touring update

Leasing Automation: Self-Touring Update

The numbers don’t lie – renters love the efficiency of every piece of leasing automation we can muster. Bots convert traffic to leads better than humans, and self-tours close at a higher rate than live tours. But automated tours come in many varieties, and property managers still worry that they don’t yet meet the mark for a truly intuitive, comprehensive solution. 

COVID has given self-touring platforms a boost, which has propelled several different business models. In this Multifamily Innovation Conference – Atlanta (MICA) session, attendees were presented updates on the state of the technology, and cases from real properties to update knowledge of how and where different offerings may be successfully plugged in to lower costs and expand leasing hours.

The panel featured Andrew Beach, Vice President of Community Technology at Mill Creek Residential; and Tyler Christiansen, CEO of Funnel Leasing.

This is all still early in the process, Beach said. “This technology isn’t something that is coming and going,” he said. “With the pandemic, we had to go out and create a process for self-touring for fobs, keys, wayfinding.”

Mill Creek Residential sent an RFP to learn about the opportunities that existed. 

“In putting the RFP together, we learned that there are so many groups that have a stake in the self-guided process, integrating to access control and the overall property management process, such as with engaging the process, activating the spaces,” he said. “At the same time, you want to make sure the prospects feel like someone is with them, and that they feel safe.”

There, Beach aimed to determine if his communities’ spaces were prepared to accommodate this.

“You need to think about the resident experience, and not just the technology,” he said. “Are they safe? You don’t want the prospective resident to feel alone or lost on your property. And yet the prospects want to not have someone from the onsite team looking over their shoulders or pushing them along.

“You need to think about customizing their tour routes so that they can find their way through our community and feel at home and feel comfortable at our property.”

To share qualitative measurements for its efforts, one way is to review resident feedback,” Beach said.

“Better, have your onsite team take the tours,” he said. “Let them experience it for themselves in the minds of the residents. You can learn from that. As we took the tours, we asked ourselves things such as, ‘Do I leave the door unlocked behind me?’ What are all the questions that are going through their heads? When are alone in the apartments, are they constantly second-guessing themselves about what they are allowed to do during the touring process? We need to enable them to tour with confidence. 

The ‘Golden Age’ of Apt Technology

Christiansen said that Covid-19 accelerated the apartment industry into the Golden Age of Technology.

“First, let’s automate the easy parts,” he said. “Using automation to set and confirm appointments is one thing, But, once the digital process becomes a physical presence at your property, the level of complexity of hardware and access grows exponentially.”

Companies began to ask, technology aside, “How do I accompany the sales person” to facilitate the sales process and convert them, he said.

Beach said the prospect’s tour is just the beginning of the relationship. 

With your touring process, “have them feel confident about how the community functions,” Beach said. Follow-up can then focus on the prospects’ needs and be more personalized, by asking about their pets, their children, and other needs that might have expressed during their tours.

“Your personal engagement should kick off at a personal level, and not be app-driven,” Beach said. “Don’t treat them like a name passing through an app.”

Christiansen said that gathering personal information from the prospect is important. It helps the leasing team to connect with them and begin a relationship with the community.

“Build the relationship to be more than just that one apartment they are touring,” he said. “It could include other units they look at in the community, or another community in the portfolio. During Covid, many who toured looked multiple properties before making their decisions. 

“There’s been tremendous investment in ILS’ [that improved] the discovery part of the process, but now, it’s shifted more to the middle part of the journey. The relationship should not simply be so app-driven. Build off of a personal touch. Touring doesn’t have to be a ‘check the box’ process, or a binary one, such as: Did they show up to take the tour? Yes or no.”

Beach said all in the apartment industry are seeking the achieve the same goal when it comes to the touring process. 

“We’re still ironing out how all this will play out; working with our partners,” he said. “We’re at the beginning of the piloting phase. We’re looking at what our team is strong at, and what providers are strong at and then will try to combine the two to get better.”

Christiansen agreed that it takes multiple vendors to get through that process.

What Tour Technology Works Best?

What type of apartment home-access system is best? It’s a tough question. Or maybe not.

“It’s one that works,” Beach said with a wry smile. “You can get ahead of yourself on this but you need to find this. But getting there is easier said than done. They don’t all work. There are ones that work 80 percent of the time and [even] 50 percent of the time. It has to be smooth. [Your process] needs to help the prospect be able to park at your community; and know know where to walk. There is access to the guest area, the common area and the home. Do you work this though an app, which gives more flexibility to deliver a Bluetooth credential? Or is it a web-based platform for entry? (A choice with less barrier to entry, he said). What about the app download and connection? Will it work with whatever phone they are using? Will there be a cellular Wi-Fi network or any dead spots? Do you have a community-wide system?”

Ultimately, he said, the apartment community’s goal is to make whatever technology is implemented to “get out of the way” of the process –be invisible to the user.

Christiansen agreed that the apartment industry is “very, very early in this process,” he said. “There is tremendous growth in this space. There’s still a lot of innovation to be done. We’re in the early stages of it all. Only a fraction of apartment communities overall is using this level of touring. We are at the innovation stage. The process has gaps that need to be plugged.”

Christensen mentioned a timely issue of prospect application ID verification.

“That’s a separate [challenge] right now, but eventually we’ll be tying that together with the overall leasing process,” he said. 

Another developing technology will be using augmented reality (AR). “How can you make people feel at home in an empty space?” Beach said. “Load some info about (the resident) so they can visualize an apartment floorplan layout and take it with them to multiple communities to see what works best. AR can show what the furniture is going to look like.”

Christiansen says the rate at which self-guided or virtual tours are done in the next six to 12 months likely won’t be as high as it’s been lately (about 70 percent).

“Even if it’s 50-50 with in-person tours, what will your staffing model look like?” he asked. “How do we facilitate an unguided yet assisted tour? Do you move to centralized leasing teams with live-chatting, a lot of bots can help with this process? Another option could be to connect them with current residents to get feedback about what it’s like living there.”

So many possibilities.

Here is the replay: