Printing & Connectivity : The hidden service
A WHITE PAPER BY TRAVTUS & WIREDSCORE , WITH INSIGHTS FROM CONVERSATIONAL INTELLIGENCE AND CERTIFICATION
30% of multifamily renters will use an onsite printer?
Everyone needs the internet. There is really no need to write a white-paper about it. However, the question of what do renter’s want, is still a fluid question and that answer changes every leasing cycle. The need for data to understand your resident experience is crucial but what’s more important is to take action on these insights. It is with this goal, that the Travtus and Wiredscore have combined conversational intelligence and best practices, to highlight the need and operational impact from connectivity support demanded by residents.
Why is connectivity a multifamily service?
Residents are working from home more, and multifamily owners and operators are now their landlords for both home and office. As a result, service expectations from apartment communities are increasing, and one of the most trending amenity today is digital connectivity and believe it of not, printing. Adam’s analysis of 50,000 conversations and 100,000 emails from customers of Multifamily residential assets across America, show that “I want to print & copy” in within the top 5 customer goals. In some communities, it is more than the number of maintenance requests being submitted. Residents are often sending unsecured documents to community inboxes and requesting the onsite office to print them on their behalf. These documents can range from powerpoint presentations, to visa documents and even return labels for online shopping. These “hidden” services are a reality for onsite teams . They are already providing the service , layered within the long tail of interactions with their residents. However, the significance and cadence of these requests is lost in the chatter of conversational operations.
Adam’s conversational intelligence tracks renter interest in connectivity and business services fluctuating with work from home announcements. The forward trend analysis confirms that that residents chatter about connectivity remains higher than 2019 levels.
During the pandemic, a direct correlation was seen between lockdowns and the trends in connectivity related chatter. The first lockdown in the summer of 2020, had a wave of chatter about public health and safety. But, the nature of chatter was very different in the summer of 2021, when residents faced the second wave of lockdowns. Adam saw a 300% rise in conversations about connectivity topics. These conversations start with a prospect asking a common question - Who pays for the internet? and continued through the resident journey with managing their internet connections.
How do we provide good and secure service?
The Wiredscore Home certification has identified five key areas to ensure that Multifamily communities can deliver a quality connectivity experience to their residents.
Stability **The internet you provide residents must be stable and capable of providing internet networks that not only perform but can also survive disruption of service. The hidden cost of connectivity support is often lost in vendor negotiations. Adam’s chatter shows 1.5x engagement when the wifi of a community is not working.
Speed **The needs for each resident are different and it is important to offer a range of connectivity packages which can fit their needs and pocket.
Security - Your residents are using their homes like offices. All data shared on your networks must be secured. Wifi offerings should always be safe and secure via a protected network. Printing exchanges must be set up to prevent data breaches from inboxes.
Setup- When a resident moves into your community, the most popular connectivity related question is - How do I set up my internet? If you chose to provide network connectivity or not, Adam notes that most residents request support with going online within the first three days of their move. To reduce the “chatter support” from new move ins, having a range of internet services already set up and ready to plug in makes it easier on both onsite employees as well as residents.
Services - Residents have expectation of service if connectivity is available. This can include assistance with getting online or public wifi access. Adam’s analysis sees an increase in support needed with regards to cable and internet hardware return. The onsite teams, may consider managing connectivity as outside their scope of service, but like most items in operations, there is scope creep with regards to co-ordinating resident’s connectivity needs. Business center facilities are now also becoming an essential amenity which needs to be managed with the same excellence as other aspects of the resident’s experience.
The most crucial aspect of providing good service is to maintain a culture of “community listening”. Tools like Adam, who assist with automation as well as information, are crucial to stay on top of the latest needs of residents and also react to them with speed. When looking at the mapping from Wiredscore as well as Adam’s field intelligence, we see a reinforcement of the message from multifamily renters.
How much do residents really care about this stuff?
We are in one of the highest inflationary markets and rents are being priced up without any need for carrots like amenities. Most operators, will ask, if there is any financial upside to adding more service to the offering. “Will it rent me more apartments”?
Our joint analysis of Adam’s conversational chatter with Wiredscore’s certification performance, tells us the the question is really about optimising a service that we are already providing. On site teams are already providing support for business services informally. They are also co-ordinating between your residents and internet companies. The calls about internet outage at the community center, comes first to your resident services desk. The question that we ask about value is no longer - is this a service we should provide? , because unknown to most operators, they are already connectivity service providers. There is however, an opportunity to do it well. Using a conversational platform like Adam, allows operators to respond to support issues and new requests without additional burden to the onsite teams. Queues of tickets can be dispatched directly to the service provider, instead of creating a triangle of support between the office, resident and the vendor. Similarly, a Wiredscore certification allows for a service propositioned to be designed for best practices such that it adds a mark of quality but also reduces support that can blimp the resident experience.
Adam maps every resident’s journey. He notes everytime your customer contacts your teams. We have seen that 30% of all residents have at some point reached out about printing services and 10% have had some interaction about internet connectivity. These are not numbers to ignore. A good resident journey, needs tools to address these needs.