The shiny new object of our industry in 2019 is “self-guided tours,” allowing prospects to visit communities and tour without a team member. While allowing someone to tour themselves isn’t new, and was how less professional buildings conducted operations even as recent as a decade ago, this time it’s here to stay.  

With the evolution of technology, the self-guided tour experience can now be purposeful, intentional and fabulous. Before jumping in the self-tour deep end, however, there are crucial questions to address. Of course, there will be lessons learned and pivots to perfect this approach, but thinking ahead will create a better experience and save headaches down the road.

Remember when Facebook was a new shiny object and properties started creating pages with fake birthdays as if the property was a person? Then the page sat stagnant because there wasn’t a plan on how to implement and manage them. 

Knowing the objective is half the battle.  

As you determine whether you want to implement self-guided tours as an option for your prospects, think through your objective, your brand and the experience you want prospects to have. Consider what industries and businesses have effective self-service business models and what you like about their models from your local grocery store to Silver Car.  Then, address these questions:

1. Will prospects have a choice or will self-guided tours be the only way to see a home?
2. Will prospects be able to tour outside of the office hours?
3. How will you verify people who will be walking through the community without a team member?
4. How will you identify prospects from residents?
5. What data will you track?  
6. Who, What, When, and Where will there be human touch points?
7. What integrated systems will you have in place to support the experience for both the on-site team and prospects?

While self-service can sound like a breach of customer service, it can be quite the opposite and enhance the customer experience.  A recent salesforce study found that 80 percent of customers say that the experience a company provides is as important as its products or services.  Couple that with 92 percent of customers who say the ability to control what personal information is collected from them makes them more likely to trust a company with that information. 

Trust is a major factor in why people choose to buy from a company. The more you can do to create trust, the more likely customers are to buy or lease in the case of the apartment industry.

There are extraordinary payoffs to incorporating self-guided tours into your customer service experience. Communities will absolutely be able to operate well without more team members than they can find to hire with the labor shortage in full force..  In many other industries, when forced human interaction was removed, foot traffic increased up to 70 percent. Could this happen for apartments?  Also with fewer forced human touch points, enhanced touch points, and increased trust, the result should be more leases.

These are exciting times. You just have to be intentional and have a plan laid out for the best execution of the vision.  Keep pushing our industry forward by bringing innovation to the forefront for better efficiencies and better experiences.