There’s a lot of buzz about artificial intelligence (AI) these days, so much so that it’s hard to separate the reality from the hype. Add to that the fact that multifamily housing (MFH) is typically a technology laggard, and it’s easy to assume that MFH executives can afford to wait a few years to see how things shake out before worrying at all about AI. Yet AI is potentially applicable to any business process that has measurable data inputs and a complex process to get to outcomes that are also measurable—a description that matches many MFH processes.

Not surprisingly, AI has been accompanied by a tremendous amount of hype, myth and confusion. To help MFH executives makes some sense of AI, we’ve put together a quick guide on the key areas where AI can (and often should) impact your operation. We highlight:

• Call Center & Sales Support – Provide specific feedback in real time, based on the caller’s tone as well as the content of the conversation.
  
  
• Marketing – Google (and Bing) don’t want us to be able to reverse engineer their algorithms. Let AI optimize these algorithms for pay per click (PPC), paid social and paid digital platforms. Learn how AI can overcome the complex challenges for customer segmentation for email campaigns and more.
  
  
• Influencing Basic Customer Interactions – Replace unreliable voice-activated personal assistants, associate and resident interactions with more reliable AI-driven chatbots. Let AI handle functions from service requests to much of the initial prospect inquiry phase, learning and expanding its capabilities each time it encounters a new request in a multitude of languages.
  
  
• Recruiting – Use AI-enabled chatbots to screen calls from prospective employees, review and rate resumes and cull resumes below a certain standard. Have HR only look at those resumes that matter.
  
  
• Affecting Our Physical World – Connect AI to smart home sensors to better understand space utilization, control home access, reduce utility bills and more.
  
  
• Pricing – Why depend on designer-specified pricing algorithms when AI can do better? An AI engine can absorb volumes and volumes of competitive and benchmarking data quicker and more accurately than humans ever could. Let AI ascertain what’s important and what isn’t.
  
  
• Physical Robots – Physical robots are finding their place in MFH operations. The K-9 robot is already patrolling and providing night security for shopping and office park parking lots while others are currently being tested for hospitality and retail applications.

As with any technology, it’s hard (as in impossible) to accurately predict exactly how and when AI will impact MFH. With such a broad canvass of applications, it’s clear that AI will make an impact on a timeline relevant to all but those who are very near retirement.