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Evolution and Adaptation for Leasing Agents
Strategies to ensure success in a rapidly changing, tech-centric landscape.
BY MARLENA DEFALCO
Today’s leasing environment has been rapidly evolving at an eclipsing pace during the past few years as more technologies engaged throughout the prospect journey. The pandemic simply further accelerated the evolution.
Industry leaders Jennifer Staciokas, Executive Managing Director of Western Wealth Communities; Guntram Weissenberger, President of The Westover Company; and Lucas Haldeman, Chief Executive Officer of SmartRent, joined Results Repeated Founder Ellen Thompson to examine the tech tools changing the leasing ecosystem and strategies to help leasing agents evolve and adapt during NAA’s APTvirtual session, “Is the Leasing Agent an Endangered Species?”
“The leasing agent has become more professional,” Weissenberger said. “They are better trained and have become better at not just selling, but also managing and dealing with the customer.”
This professional growth, according to Weissenberger, started as things have been removed from the leasing agents’ desks, enabling them to concentrate on customer service. One such example —marketing, and more importantly, technology to optimize marketing and leasing practices.
Bots and Discovery Capture
Chatbots, designed to interpret text from a prospective resident, can respond to about 95% of questions, shared Thompson. The 24/7 accessibility of the technology enables it to capture and converse with prospective residents when they are ready. For instance, bots are capturing the 40% of contact forms coming into a leasing office after hours and the 55% of emails that are not responded to by the leasing agent.
Voice bots are the natural progression to a chatbot, as they are able to engage over the phone. This technology has been vital, as data indicates that almost half of calls placed to leasing offices are missed, and 87% of prospective residents do not leave a voicemail. Voice bots are capturing the leads you don’t even know you are missing.
Access Control and Self-Guided Tours
As the industry continues to create a frictionless leasing process through technology like bots, it is important to offer that ease through the tour process as well. Enter the self-guided tour — again a technology and service that was gaining momentum before the pandemic that found itself as the central technology to carry leasing through the tough months of shutdowns.
Access control became a focal point of implementing self-guided tour options. “You can have the greatest app in the world and with the whizzbang maps and real-time location and availability but if you can’t get someone in the front door, and the unit door, it’s all for naught,” Haldeman said. “We need to modernize our access control systems.”
Implementing access control into new developments is easy, but it can prove expensive for retrofits. Operators should consider solutions where they don’t have to do every door but enable a path to get a prospective resident into the front door, amenity spaces and into the unit.
Furthermore, according to Haldeman, there is simply a segment of the renter population that just doesn’t plan. While online scheduling and online lead nurturing may work for
