It’s never been more difficult to be a property manager than it is today. Heightened resident and prospect expectations, conditioned by the “on-demand economy,” have put a large amount of pressure on onsite team members to be available around the clock. The numbers don’t lie—a recent NAA study indicated that work-related stresses are seriously weighing on property manager mental health levels, with 68% of respondents indicating a mild to moderate level of negative impact from their work and 11% stating a significant impact.
At EliseAI, we feel strongly that the modern property manager deserves better work-life balance, better tools to deal with upset residents (cited as the worst part of the job for 22% of respondents), and more support for dealing with a high workload. That’s why we build AI and automation technology that’s designed to mitigate pain points faced by property managers and other onsite staff, helping companies like GoldOller Real Estate Investments improve employee retention rates by almost 50%.
Let’s dive into 4 of the most common pain points shared in the NAA study and examine how AI can help resolve them, with real examples of customer success stories to illustrate the impact of AI in the field.
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Pain Point One: Dealing With Upset Residents
It’s never easy for a property manager to elegantly defuse a situation with an upset resident. Whether due to factors within their control or outside of them, property managers often end up on the receiving end of unhappy resident feedback, which can significantly add to their stress levels and cause burnout that results in turnover. Onsite team members shouldn’t have to sit there and deal with negative speech, but residents also deserve to express their frustration—they are paying rent, after all. That being said, there has to be a better way for upset residents to communicate that they’re upset, which is where AI comes in.
AI can be a first line of defense against upset residents, minimizing the amount of angry feedback property managers have to deal with themselves and allowing them to focus on the more rewarding aspects of the role. AI can eloquently and thoughtfully respond to angry residents, either via voice call through solutions like VoiceAI or via email, chat, or text, without having its feeling hurt.
AI also ensures upset resident feedback is turned into actionable insights, either by opening a work order if the resident is upset about maintenance issues, resolving payment related concerns, or by deescalating an angry encounter into a more pleasant one through natural, humanlike speech. AI doesn’t have feelings like people do, giving residents an outlet to air their grievances freely without negatively impacting the mental health of the property managers at their communities.
Pain Point Two: Inability to Switch Off After-Hours
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Being a property manager means you’re supposed to work from 9 to 5, but the reality of the situation is that many property managers fill the role of round-the-clock point of contact for the communities they work at. We’ve seen this “all hours of the day” trend continue to become more and more pronounced as consumer behaviors continue to shift as a result of conditioning by “on-demand” brands like Amazon, Grubhub, and Uber, with EliseAI data showing that over 40% of leasing inquiries coming in after the leasing office is closed.
When speed of reply is a key determinant of whether or not a prospect schedules a tour, onsite team members who are compensated based on move-ins are stuck having to handle messages around the clock lest they lose potential income. This inability to turn off is having a significant impact on onsite team mental health, as they lose the ability to recharge away from work.
AI can bridge this gap by fielding both resident and prospect messages around the clock, allowing property managers to unplug and unwind during their hours away from the office. AI doesn’t need to sleep and never needs to turn off, meaning those 11:47pm “can I schedule a tour?” messages are answered nearly instantaneously. Now, your onsite team can have the night off while you convert leads around the clock, helping you stand out in your competitive set by reducing friction from the prospect journey.
Pain Point Three: Maintaining Proper Staffing Levels
With turnover rates in the multifamily industry at an all time high, keeping up optimal staffing levels has been a challenge for operators of all sizes. In certain submarkets operators are feeling this pain even more acutely than others, resulting in inadequate onsite staffing that negatively impacts both the resident and employee experience. Understaffing directly contributes to other key causes of property manager burnout, like putting additional pressure on onsite team members to work after-hours and contributing to resident unhappiness that could result in confrontations.
AI solves the staffing level issue by providing attentive, round the clock support to residents and prospects alike, allowing your property managers to run their communities efficiently even if they don’t have as many onsite team members as you traditionally would need. We’ve seen operators boost onsite team sentiment while implementing a leaner staffing model with support from EliseAI. AI is allowing operators to do more with less, without putting additional stress on the plates of their current onsite teams.
Pain Point Four: Managing Their Workload
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The property manager of today has a lot on their plates. Between people management, recruiting, budget management, resident escalations, enforcing OSHA standards, managing vendors, contracts, and invoices, rent collections, record keeping, and more, the growing list of complex responsibilities means it’s harder than ever to stay on top of everything. In an understaffed environment, responsibilities that might normally be handled by an assistant community manager or resident experience specialist could end up falling to a property manager as well.
For veteran property management professionals like Arthur Kosmider, Senior Director of Marketing and Customer Experience at LeFrak, leveraging AI to “automate the routine and humanize the exceptional” can be a significant lever for reducing onsite workload and improving the employee experience. AI can take the worst parts of the property manager role and automate them, handling uncomfortable tasks like delinquency communications for example, and allow them to hone in on the meaningful, impactful work that requires a human touch.
Better workload management through AI and automation results in higher employee satisfaction levels, decreased burnout, and increased retention rates.
Start Supporting Your Property Managers with AI
The push to create better onsite experiences and improve staff retention rates goes beyond simply throwing new technology at the problem and hoping for the best. It requires a measured understanding of the challenges actually faced by property managers, strategic evaluation of technology that can help support them by solving those pain points, and consolidation of platforms when applicable. That’s why 500+ operators around the United States have moved their operations onto the EliseAI platform, boosting conversion rates and staff retention through intelligent automation and thoughtful centralization.
Today, these forward-thinking operators are deploying AI to support their onsite teams, automating the most tedious parts of their day to day and letting them work on the responsibilities that truly matter to them. Retaining onsite employees is about making the work feel important to them, and AI can go a long way towards helping them get there.