Technical support is the fastest growing overhead for rental operators
Most rental operators believe that maintenance & leasing are the two main functions of property operations. However, maintenance only makes up 15% of all interactions, and leasing can range between 20% to 11% depending on the month. But did you know that 8% of all interactions with residents and prospects are for technical support?
As more rental operators adopt tech, including leasing applications, resident portals, package lockers, and smart gates, the outreach for assistance with using the tech or reporting the issues with tech has been steadily increasing.
It is important to note that while most technology is supported directly by the vendor, the end-user first reaches out to their property manager or landlord to support any technology provided to them. Most of this support, today, is handled by an ad-hoc manager and often lost in a three-way conversation between operator, customer & vendor.
The four biggest drivers of technical support are:
Data Inconsistency
The real estate industry is notorious for bad data quality and its lack of open infrastructure for data to flow freely. A large number of support tasks are related to occupants and tenants not being registered across platforms and the use of phone numbers and emails which don’t match users and systems. This type of support usually falls back to the property or leasing staff since it is not something that can be resolved by the vendor’s support task.
Disjointed User Experience
Residents and prospects recognize the brand of their landlords but not that of ‘proptech’ solutions. ‘Bolting’ multiple software solutions together without designing the user’s journey impacts their experience of your brand. The addition of technology as a layer between direct interactions has also shifted the user’s need for support from – “I want to” to “How do I”. The user is looking for support on what tools they have to interact with to achieve a specific goal. These interactions fall to the property teams to assist the users with the knowledge of the platforms to trigger a required process.
User Error
The most popular example of user error is seen with package lockers when delivery service professionals scan the wrong package or misplace an item in the wrong locker. In the case that a resident raises a ticket directly with the package locker vendor, these support tickets are often sent back to the on-site teams to resolve on the ground. Most user error support tasks for cloud-based software can be escalated to tech vendors but often result in the residents wanting to use an alternative method. A great example is users roadblocked trying to make a payment before the due date, wanting an alternative method to make the payment instead of waiting to resolve the error.
Technical Bug & setup
The smallest contributor to technical support concerns is an actual bug or a problem with the configuration of the software or hardware. These bugs are often reported by the residents or prospects but have to be formally raised as a ticket by the operator with their technology vendor.
The adoption of technology is essential for rental operators to stay nimble and relevant to the future, however, technical support is crucial to the overall success of the strategic benefits of technology. When your customers run into a problem, they call you and not your vendor. These questions need to answer with technical expertise. A very common reason for attrition of on-site staff is the lack of training or tools to get the job done and adding technical support to the burden of the ‘long tail’ makes the job more unstructured.