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“We don’t need an AI assistant for our communities, we already have a chatbot built into our PMS.”
At EliseAI, we hear this every single day. But the reality is that saying a multifamily chatbot is the same thing as a multifamily AI assistant is like saying a bicycle is the same as a motorcycle. They both have two wheels and help you get where you want to go, but no one would confuse one for the other.
Unlike the differences between a bike and a motorcycle, the differences between multifamily chatbots and multifamily AI assistants aren’t so obvious at first glance. They both provide responses to resident and prospect inquiries in a text based format, so it might seem like they are capable of filling the same role. However, once you get under the hood it becomes clear that the technology that powers these tools is incredibly different, and subsequently delivers contrasting experiences for prospects and residents. But before we zoom in on the differences, we have to understand exactly what chatbots and AI assistants are first.
Understanding Multifamily Chatbots
When comparing multifamily chatbots to multifamily AI assistants it’s important to have a baseline for exactly what a chatbot is. At its core, a chatbot is nothing more than a simple automation. In general, they aren’t capable of going beyond the simple inquiries they are programmed to respond to. Chatbots are designed to handle basic queries via predefined conversation trees, many of which don’t accept free text entry and rely on pre-populated messages. These chatbots rely on static decision paths, and provide very limited adaptability.
For example, when a prospect asks about parking availability they’ll receive a generic, pre-scripted response. But what about when the prospect digs a bit deeper and asks about a specific feature of the parking garage?
Unfortunately, the conversation flow breaks down when the prospect asks a question that the chatbot doesn’t have a pre-programmed answer for. Upon hitting one of these unanswerable questions a chatbot will either kick back to a catch all answer like “I don’t have the information you need,” or, like in the above example, be unable to process the question at all. This leads to a poor user experience when the query doesn’t fit the predefined paths laid out during the setup process.
One other major weakness of chatbots is that they have no capability to learn and improve over time based on interactions with prospects and residents. If, in the above scenario, a leasing agent were to take over the conversation and inform the prospect that the ceiling height of the garage is 12 feet tall, the chatbot would be unable to use that answer in subsequent conversations unless the agent went into the back end of the chatbot and reprogrammed it. This inability to improve over time without manual intervention significantly limits the effectiveness of chatbots.
Understanding Multifamily AI Assistants
While a chatbot is little more than a simple automation that can’t learn over time, AI assistants are advanced conversational technology that leverage machine learning to handle a wide range of inquiries, using natural language processing to understand and respond intelligently. Unlike multifamily chatbots that regurgitate pre-programmed responses to basic questions, AI assistants are able to generate unique answers to unstructured questions that sound like they were written by a real person. While an AI assistant does need a source of truth to pull information from to ensure it’s not making things up out of the blue, each answer it generates will be written specifically to fit the flow of the conversation.
Unlike a chatbot that can’t learn over time, AI assistants rely on a human-AI feedback loop that allows them to evolve with human intervention and learn from past interactions. To circle back to the parking garage example, the AI would be able to use the information about the ceiling height provided by the agent in subsequent conversations. In this way, AI assistants have the ability to adapt and improve over time.
An AI assistant is also capable of handling questions it doesn’t know the answer to much more gracefully than a multifamily chatbot. As we saw before, when a chatbot doesn’t know the answer to a question it breaks the natural flow of conversation and produces a canned response, or is unable to recognize the unanswerable query entirely. An AI assistant is able to seamlessly push through the question it can’t provide an answer to, maintaining a natural conversational flow to keep driving a prospect through the funnel.
This ability to handle a wide variety of questions in a humanlike tone ensures prospects and residents stay engaged while reducing the need for inputs from your team members.
Key Differences Between Multifamily Chatbots and Multifamily AI Assistants
Now that we have a little more context into what exactly multifamily AI assistants and multifamily chatbots are, let’s compare them head to head in a variety of areas.
Learning and Improvement
While chatbots are static and unable to learn over time, AI assistants are dynamic, and use learnings from interactions, misspellings, edge cases, and human feedback loops to provide more helpful answers to residents and prospects. AI assistants incorporate new information from agent intervention to deliver improved answers over time, whereas chatbots continue to produce the same answers even after an agent intervenes and provides updated information.
"AI isn't stagnant and will only get better as a product over time, whereas a chatbot isn’t learning, developing, or growing with your business."
-Chloe Litchfield, Operations Manager at EliseAI
In addition, EliseAI’s products are constantly reviewed and refined by teams of dedicated AI trainers who specialize in helping the AI handle edge cases it may not be familiar with. These learnings and improvements are subsequently built back into the platform, improving performance over time.
Inquiry Complexity
Chatbots are capable of handling simple, repetitive, structured queries. AI assistants can manage more complex questions using natural language processing, and escalate appropriately to human agents when necessary.
Customization and Personalization
AI assistants grow more and more familiar with the communities they’re deployed on over time through feedback and by incorporating more information, while chatbots remain rigid and do not pick up on community-specific information. AI assistants remember conversations they have already had with prospects and residents and use that information in subsequent conversations, whereas chatbots do not build on earlier conversations to deliver personalized experiences.
Human-AI Collaboration
While AI assistants leverage human trainers for ongoing refinement and quality assurance, chatbots operate in isolation. AI assistants incorporate answers provided during agent intervention into their pool of knowledge to draw on in subsequent conversations, whereas chatbots do not. Chatbots break conversational flow when confronted with a question they don’t have an answer to, while AI assistants are capable of continuing conversations while flagging the need for agent involvement.
Why The Difference Between Multifamily Chatbots and Multifamily AI Assistants Matters for Property Managers
The differences between multifamily AI assistants and multifamily chatbots result in two contrasting experiences for residents and prospects. While AI assistants ensure prospects and residents receive accurate, timely, and personalized responses, chatbots often leave those same prospects and residents unsatisfied or confused. For property management companies looking to deliver high-quality resident and prospect experiences, there’s no doubt that a multifamily AI assistant is the right choice over a chatbot.
Beyond the difference in prospect and resident experiences, property management companies should also choose an AI assistant over a chatbot due to the amount of work it takes off the plate of your team members. AI assistants’ ability to handle increasingly complex scenarios without frustrating users reduces the need for manual escalation and subsequently reduces the amount of communications your agents are responsible for. With AI able to automate roughly 90% of all property management teams’ workflows, your team members will have more time to focus on differentiating your communities with attention to detail, concierge-like service, and a level of personalization that would otherwise be difficult to achieve.
Choosing the Right Multifamily AI Assistant for Your Communities
For multifamily property management companies looking to deliver fantastic resident and prospect experiences, there’s no comparison between the impact an AI assistant can have versus a multifamily chatbot. And if you’re looking for an AI assistant that can help with both inbound and outbound communications, improve collection rates, and drive faster lead-to-lease times, look no further than EliseAI. Our suite of conversational AI products are used by NMHC Top 50 operators across the US to improve community performance and boost resident engagement. Get in touch with us via the form below to learn more.