Is it easy for you to communicate with tenants quickly and through the channels, they prefer (like text or Slack)?
80% of tenants prefer to communicate through instant messaging channels such as texts or Slack. However, most property teams communicate through email and phone calls. If you communicate like this, you’re not creating the best tenant experience possible – which can lead to unhappy tenants who don’t renew their leases.
Nowadays, tenants expect instant communication from you and your team. But, when you have so many other things to do every day, it can be hard to respond quickly to tenants – leading to lower tenant satisfaction and retention.
How can you communicate quickly with tenants through the mediums they prefer?
With a virtual chatbot – which can respond to tenants without any effort from you. Chatbots can communicate with tenants through a variety of channels (like text). Plus, chatbots can get out important information to tenants quickly and reliably.
Wondering if chatbot technology is right for you? Here are 3 benefits of using chatbots to help you find out.
1. Reduced Administrative Work
One benefit of chatbots is that they can help tenants – without any administrative lift from your team.
When tenants submit a work order or have a property question, they have to email or call you. Then, you have to log a work order and assign it to the right person. Or, when answering questions, you have to craft a personal response.
Responding to tenant requests and inquiries creates a lot of administrative work for you and your team. This increases your operating expenses and decreases efficiency. While you could hire a person whose sole job is to respond to tenant communications, hiring additional team members is expensive.
Instead, you could use a chatbot – which can dramatically decrease the administrative work required to communicate with tenants. Chatbots can respond almost instantly to tenants – increasing tenant satisfaction. And, chatbots can help tenants get issues resolved by logging work orders. All while saving you and your team hours each week.
2. Multi-Channel Communication
Another benefit to chatbots is they can communicate through a variety of messaging apps.
When tenants have an issue or question, they likely have to call or email you. Or, they might have to come to talk to you in person. However, most tenants today don’t want to communicate with you through calls or emails. They want to communicate with text, Slack, or other messaging interfaces.
Not having tenant preferred communication channels can make tenants unhappy and hurt tenant retention. While you could allow tenants to text or Slack message you, it can be time-consuming to monitor all the different messaging channels tenants like to use. This makes it easy to lose tenant messages – which hurts tenant satisfaction instead of improving it.
A chatbot can monitor multiple communication channels for you. With chatbot technology that integrates with a variety of messaging platforms, you can give tenants many options for requesting services or asking questions. That way, you can keep tenants happy by communicating with them how they want – without increasing your team’s workload. This chatbot will also complete records of every communication that you have with each tenant, in case you need to refer back to it later.
3. Chatbot Technology Helps Distribute Important Info Fast
Along with reducing administrative work and multi-channel communication, chatbots can help you get important information to tenants.
When you have announcements, you likely send emails, post fliers on tenant doors, or even talk to tenants in person. However, since tenants might not check their email often or look at fliers you hand out, they might miss important info. This can make tenants feel out of the loop and disengaged with your building – hurting tenant satisfaction and retention. And in the event of a security threat or weather emergency, an inability to reach every tenant quickly can even be dangerous.
To fix this, you could send out important information multiple times through a variety of channels. But, this can be time-consuming. And, getting the same information so many times can be annoying to tenants – which can lead to unhappy tenants.
However, chatbot technology makes it easy to get tenants the important information they need. When you have alerts, building changes, or other information, you can give the announcement to the chatbot. Then, the chatbot will distribute the info to tenants through their preferred communication method. So, tenants get the info they need – without much work on your part.
Finding the Right Chatbot Technology
Communicating with tenants can be time-consuming. You have to spend hours each week managing tenant requests, questions, and more. And, if you and your team don’t respond instantly, tenant satisfaction and retention can decrease.
However, with chatbot technology, you don’t have to spend time responding to tenants. The chatbot can do it for you while providing your building with a differentiating feature that can help attract tenants. A chatbot can communicate with tenants through their preferred channel – like text or Slack and can get important info to tenants quickly. All of which help tenants feel more engaged and satisfied with your service – leading to higher tenant retention.
Looking for chatbot technology that helps you communicate with tenants? Consider the Building Engines chatbot, Bengie. Bengie can respond to tenant requests, communicate with tenants through multiple channels, distribute important info, and more.
Want to learn other ways in which the Building Engines platform can help you delight tenants and make your team more efficient?
Watch our on-demand webinar, Introducing Prism: the Modern Software Platform for CRE Building Operations.
