Flaws in the Existing Model
As anyone who has rented an apartment or home knows, the traditional property management model has inefficiencies that often result in poor experiences for prospective renters and subpar resident experiences. Messages regularly go unanswered, self-guided tours are frequently underwhelming, and it can feel impossible to get an answer about anything having to do with a community from a leasing agent. But when you pull back the curtain on the way buildings are being operated today, it becomes clear that property managers are fighting an uphill battle. With staff turnover rates of over 30% and higher than ever consumer expectations, companies are scrambling to revamp the way they manage their communities.
For many organizations, that change has come in the form of centralization. Building dedicated offsite teams for functions like leasing, operations, and resident services to allow on-site staff to fully focus on providing tours and managing resident services has helped some operators reduce costs and improve the leasing experience. By now, most property management companies are aware of the benefits of this model and have at very least tried to implement components of it into their operations. However, one roadblock many operators have failed to solve lies on the technological side of the equation.
Legacy Multifamily CRM and PMS Software Comes Up Short
Most customer relationship management (CRM) software struggles to fully support centralized models. While many multifamily CRM solutions allow users to manage customer data and guest cards from across multiple properties, they often lack the advanced features needed to scale support operations, promote employee efficiency, or help manage customer communications. It can be even worse for third party managers who manage properties for multiple ownership groups, as they might have to use different CRM software for each one based on client preferences. Additionally, most software also provides limited or no options for handling inbound calls directly within the platform, which is where the majority of inquiries originate from.
What the multifamily industry needs is CRM software designed to support specialized offsite teams at scale while simultaneously helping onsite leasing teams prioritize and handle their responsibilities at the communities level. Today, we’ll drill down specifically into what you should be looking for in a multifamily CRM to support your centralized model.
What to Look for in a Multifamily CRM #1: Built Around AI, Not AI Add-Ons
With new AI products taking the world by storm over the last few years, every multifamily CRM vendor has felt pressure to add some AI functionality or features into their CRM. The unfortunate reality is not all AI is created equal. Most multifamily CRM platforms are built with slapped on AI functionality that doesn’t add much additional value to the platform. It’s important to recognize whether the CRM was designed around the transformative power of AI, or whether the company scrambled to tack on some AI bells and whistles to make it look like they had product parity in a competitive market.
EliseCRM is the only multifamily CRM built specifically around AI, which makes sense when you consider that EliseCRM is only available when bundled with either the ResidentAI or LeasingAI product. So what differentiates a purpose-built AI multifamily CRM from a traditional CRM? For one it’s the ability of the CRM to autonomously handle interactions that would otherwise require human intervention. Basic tasks like sending leasing follow-up emails and maintenance requests can be resolved by an AI over 80% of the time, which ensures your team only needs to handle the more complicated conversations that can’t be managed by AI.
Unlike a traditional CRM, an AI-first CRM becomes more powerful over time as it learns more about your properties and communities. In EliseCRM that happens in the Knowledge Hub, the source where your on-site and centralized teams can manage all the information related to your properties that the AI will utilize in conversations. The AI pulls information from the Knowledge Hub to answer prospect inquiries, and any conversations that the AI has to pass off to a member of the property management staff are subsequently looped back into the Knowledge Hub for future reference by the AI. Every resident and prospect interaction gives the AI context to inform its future answers, creating a feedback loop that will reduce the amount of communications that need to be passed off to human team members over time. The traditional CRM is valuable as a source of information, but lacks the problem solving capabilities and long term efficiency gains of an AI-first CRM.
What to Look for in a Multifamily CRM #2: Centralized Source of Information
When all your data is spread across a variety of platforms it can be difficult to draw any accurate and actionable conclusions. It also increases the risk that inbound leads or resident requests fall through the cracks, as team members are forced to try and manage messages and notifications from a variety of sources. A well designed multifamily CRM consolidates all prospect and resident interactions into a single, easy-to-navigate platform that gives both your centralized and on-site teams data driven insights, allowing you to quickly report on overall property and portfolio performance.
EliseCRM aggregates data from across your communities, community groups, marketing sources, and integrations into easy to understand reports and dashboards, giving both your centralized and on-site teams a high level overview of all relevant prospect and resident information in one single source. EliseCRM centralizes all your AI’s communications with residents and prospects in one place, keeping everyone on the same page and helping delineated responsibilities on-site. Plus, EliseCRM’s integrations with products from companies including Yardi, Entrata, and RealPage make pulling and pushing data to and from other products simple.
What to Look for in a Multifamily CRM #3: Simplified Workflows and Improved Usability
Common issues with traditional multifamily CRM platforms include outdated designs, unintuitive workflows, lack of integrations, poor performance, and lack of functionality. These pains are amplified further for third party managers who have to use a different CRM for each property because of owner preferences. For property managers who are accustomed to modern, easy-to-use consumer software it can be an incredibly jarring experience to have to rely on an outdated multifamily CRM for their day to day responsibilities.
Unlike traditional multifamily CRMs, EliseCRM is designed with ease-of-use and customizability in mind. For example, property management companies are able to configure their groups based on how they organize their on-site teams. Have on-site or centralized teams that work across multiple communities? EliseCRM allows your team members to manage resident and prospect interactions like they’re all from a single community, while still maintaining data separation at the community level. While this feature may sound simple, it represents a massive quality of life improvement that most other multifamily CRMs can’t accommodate. This functionality also allows Elise’s LeasingAI product to cross-sell in conversations with prospects or renewal candidates, improving lease-to-lease rates and helping increase performance across your portfolio.
What to Look for in a Multifamily CRM #4: Better Prospect and Resident Experiences
In a fast-paced rental market, letting a prospect inquiry sit unanswered for more than a few hours is a surefire way to lose a potential resident. With that in mind, your multifamily CRM should be designed to help your property management team prioritize and follow up with inbound communications as fast as possible. The same principle applies to your residents as well, who don’t want to have to wait days on end to hear back from your team about questions or maintenance requests. Most traditional CRM software doesn’t have the ability to prioritize resident and prospect requests, pushing them all to your centralized and on-site teams without actually taking any work off their plates. This results in missed messages that negatively impact property performance, whether in decreased lead-to-lease percentages or lower renewal rates.
An AI-first CRM like EliseCRM is built around prioritization and responsiveness, autonomously handling simple resident and prospect inquiries and only requiring human intervention for edge cases. The AI handles whatever inquiries it can across webchat, text, email, and call, and escalates issues to centralized or on-site teams only when needed, ensuring prospects and residents alike get 24/7 support. Immediate responses around the clock is a massive differentiator when it comes to prospect and resident experiences, and sets EliseCRM apart from its competitors.
Enabling a Centralized Model with the Right Multifamily CRM
For teams looking to move to a centralized property management model, picking the right CRM can be make or break. Picking the wrong software—one that doesn’t help your team prioritize and handle inbound communications, doesn’t centralize your data in one accessible place, or isn’t built around AI—makes it more difficult for your team to do their jobs and prevents your centralized teams from effectively working at scale. On the flip side, choosing the right, AI-first CRM can help your centralized team make an outsized impact across your portfolio, increasing NOI and delivering better prospect and resident experiences at all of your communities. If you’re looking for the only multifamily CRM built to help you maximize the potential of your centralized teams using AI, EliseCRM might just be the right choice for you.