For many multifamily operators, the resident app functions as a primary means for residents to get community information, make payments, and, importantly, submit maintenance requests. But most resident apps don’t give residents visibility into the status of their maintenance requests, nor make it easy for maintenance techs to organize their requests in one place. One inefficiency we see operators struggle with is a lack of standardization of resident created work orders that leads to duplicated work or multiple visits for maintenance techs. For operators looking to build out centralized maintenance teams, the lack of consistency makes it difficult to optimize their tech scheduling, as well as prevents them from leveraging data for predictive maintenance and efficient capital deployment. What if, instead of relying on residents to effectively categorize and create their own work orders, operators could leverage new technology to inject consistency into the work order creation process? And what if that new technology could go one step further and actually teach residents how to fix minor issues on their own?
EliseAI’s ResidentAI product leverages conversational AI to help maintenance teams handle what matters—resolving resident maintenance requests faster and more efficiently. Not only can does it standardize the work order creation process, but it can also help residents troubleshoot and triage minor issues. While today a resident might request maintenance support for something that can be fixed by flipping a breaker, AI can walk those residents through steps to solve their own problems, saving maintenance technician bandwidth and reducing costs for after-hours maintenance call centers. Let’s take a deeper look at how AI can help operators reduce maintenance costs, improve resident satisfaction, and effectively implement a centralized maintenance model.
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Issues with Existing Maintenance Workflows
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Handling resident maintenance requests is a balancing act that often leads to inefficiencies, unnecessary expenses, and frustrated residents. The way maintenance is handled today creates several pain points that make it harder to deliver a positive resident experience while keeping operational costs under control.
Maintenance Issue #1: After-hours emergency calls drive up costs
Emergency maintenance is expensive, especially when it requires waking up a technician in the middle of the night. Each after-hours call can cost hundreds of dollars, often for issues that could have been resolved without a technician’s visit.
Maintenance Issue #2: Technicians are sent for issues residents could fix themselves
Simple problems like resetting a breaker to restore power to an apartment or unclogging a drain with a plunger or cleaning solution often don’t require professional help. But, in the absence of support, residents usually tend to submit work orders for minor issues, leading to unnecessary site visits for maintenance techs.
Maintenance Issue #3: Incomplete or unclear work orders cause delays
Missing details, like unit numbers, issue descriptions, or access instructions, force technicians to make unnecessary trips to diagnose the problem before they can return with the right tools and parts.
Maintenance Issue #4: Time is wasted manually logging work orders
Many operators still work out of multiple systems that require staff to input maintenance requests manually, adding another task to the plates of your onsite teams.
Maintenance Issue #5: Lack of centralized communication slows down resolution times
If maintenance requests come in from multiple sources, whether through SMS, resident apps, phone calls, and visits to the front desk, it can be a challenge to keep everyone on the same page. Making sure techs only have to work out of one platform makes maintenance operations far more efficient.
Maintenance Issue #6: No visibility into request status leads to resident frustration
Without real-time updates on their maintenance requests, residents often feel left in the dark. This lack of transparency results in repeated follow-ups, unnecessary frustration, and ultimately, a poor perception of the property which can lead to negative reviews.
These inefficiencies don’t just frustrate your maintenance techs, but also create poor resident experiences and increase operational costs due to duplicated work. Given the repudiation-based nature of the multifamily industry, even one or two bad Google reviews over escalated maintenance issues can negatively impact your ability to lease units. Fortunately, emerging AI and automation technology can go a long way towards preventing some of these common maintenance issues.
Standardizing Work Order Creation with AI
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Rather than rely on residents to file maintenance requests or asking onsite teams to manually enter work orders, conversational AI technology can be used to standardize the work order creation process. By using natural language processing to extract the meaning and intention of residents’ messages about maintenance (like if a resident texts to book a common space and mentions a maintenance issue), AI can implement a standard categorization process for work orders by ensuring all relevant information is included and that the work order is properly grouped. Improved categorization of your work orders can also allow your maintenance team to identify trends and even get ahead of potential issues before they arise with more accurate data.
AI for De-Escalation and Issue Triaging
Beyond helping maintenance teams to standardize their work order creation process, conversational AI can go one step further and actually help walk residents through simple maintenance fixes. For example, a resident may call the maintenance number and complain that the lights in their apartment aren’t working. In that case, EliseAI would first walk them through resetting their GFCI outlet, before instructing them to check their breaker box. A lot of common issues that would otherwise require maintenance technicians can be fixed by simply flipping a switch.
AI can also help de-escalate emergency maintenance calls, with EliseAI’s products de-escalating over 20% of requests residents consider urgent. Whether it’s a resident insisting a routine maintenance issue needs to be handled after hours, or just standard de-escalation of emergency (like a broken faucet in an apartment with two bathrooms), conversational AI can help you reduce costs for after-hours maintenance visits while also delivering satisfactory explanations and additional support to residents.
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Standing Up a Centralized Maintenance Function with AI
Leveraging AI is also a key component of effectively structuring a centralized maintenance function. While maintenance tasks cannot be fully moved off site as they involve management of physical facilities, operators can still move tasks like work order submissions, maintenance tech scheduling, communications, and performance tracking to centralized offsite teams. Centralizing the work order creation process with support from AI eliminates inconsistency and facilitates clearer reporting on portfolio-wide trends or recurring property-level issues.
AI also helps centralized teams drive high levels of resident satisfaction by delivering proactive updates that keep them in the loop. AI solutions proactively communicate any change in ticket status to residents, which results in increased resident confidence and satisfaction with maintenance. AI can also solicit reviews immediately after a service is completed from happy residents, which can significantly help operators with their reputation management.
Getting Started with AI for Maintenance Today
For multifamily, student, affordable, and SFR operators, integrating AI into your tech stack can yield significant results by reducing work order completion time, improving maintenance staff satisfaction levels, and through offering increased opportunities for data driven decision making. When coupled with centralized maintenance strategies, AI can have a transformative impact on the way you manage maintenance at your communities. Get in touch with the EliseAI team today to learn more about how our ResidentAI product can help improve your maintenance operations today.