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The Most Impactful Technologies on the Customer Journey

The Most Impactful Technologies on the Customer Journey

Technology adoption can often be viewed through the lens of prioritization as the defining factor in implementation.  No matter how amazing different solutions appear to be, a given company or department can handle only so much new technology without change management running out of control.  In the 2023 NMHC/ RealFoundations Customer Experience (CX) Survey and Report, responders shared what areas benefited most from new CX technology, and what was in their sights for the future.

To begin, the impacts were most often seen on the marketing and customer acquisition side of the equation:(reflects what area benefited most from new technology solutions)

Attract and Engage: 42%
Lead: 32%
Application: 10%
Tour: 8%
Resident Experience: 5%
Renewal: 3%

(As a side note, as mentioned in my last article, 44% of companies indicated that Marketing was the "managing department" for technology, so it stands to reason that technology would continue to be focused in this area)

Some of the most commonly implemented technology solutions related to marketing and lead acquisition were:(reflects percent of respondents who implemented each technology)

Applicant Portal: 95%
Virtual Tours of Units/Floorplans: 95%
Electronic Lease Signature: 93%
Tour Self-Scheduler: 88%

Looking forward, operators see the biggest opportunities in the customer journey lie with Resident Experience and Renewal technologies.  While 100% of respondents reported having a resident portal solution with maintenance requests and rent payment options, other resident-facing customer experience technologies were under-implemented relative to prospect-facing technologies:(reflects percent of respondents who implemented each technology)

Amenity Reservations: 45%
Self-Service Renewals: 43%
Resident Reward Solutions: 40%
Concierge Services: 18%

Along with sharing some of the study's findings, the session shared some notable thoughts from the panelists:

Stephanie Gonzalez
Vice President, Innovation, Venterra Realty
 

Joseph Bagby
EVP, Chief Experience Officer at Continental Properties
 

Virginia Love
Industry Principal, Entrata

Jason Whittington
CTO - Real Estate Business Analytics (REBA)
 

  • According to Virginia Love, when it comes to establishing a favorable experience with prospects and residents, PMC's are not just competing with other multifamily operators. Instead, they are competing against the experiences provided by service providers in other industries, as well. Prospects and residents are seeing improved customer experiences in these other services and also demanding it with their renting experience.

  • The term "frictionless" came up repeatedly in the panel. As the number of technologies, apps, and services grows, creating a cohesive experience has become more challenging, and yet more important. The customer experience should not feel like 20 different services, even if that many have a role in that resident journey. From another panel, it was brought up that a good metric for managing this frictionless process is to examine the clicks required for each process or task.

  • Similar to outward-facing cohesiveness, data is struggling to be consolidated. As Stephanie Gonzalez mentioned, as the data is piecemealed from disparate services, so the consolidated data story becomes piecemealed. She is looking to see who can solve for centralized data the fastest.

  • Joe Bagby shared they are starting a resident rewards program, and two key elements they looked to accomplish are 1) ensure the process is incredibly simple for residents, and 2) examine whether it actually motivates new or more profitable behavior.

  • Stephanie Gonzalez indicated they were able to increase maintenance quality scores from 3.2 to 4.8 by leveraging AI and automation to phone residents upon maintenance completion.  AI will soon better handle that function than humans because of its reliability and the capability to learn when best to place that call for each resident while understanding the preferred outcomes.

  • Jason Whittington shared four major considerations when it comes to data provided by 3rd party service providers:

1) Where does the data reside?
2) How do you access, move, or copy your data?
3) Is there a cost to accessing, moving, or copying your data?
4) Who owns your data?

And to add a few more considerations outside of what was shared in the panel:

5) Beyond costs to the PMC to access their own data housed by a service provider, are there costs for secondary, tertiary, etc service providers to access the data stored at the primary service provider location.
6) What rights does the service provider have to your data to use externally, such as data aggregation across multiple client companies?

I'm curious what your all's focus is in 2024 when it comes to technology. Are you also seeing a shift towards customer experience technologies, or are there higher priorities in the mix?

 

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