How Worcester Communities Improved Lead Nurturing, Maintenance and Resident Communications with EliseAI

Worcester Communities is a family-owned real estate investment company founded in 2006. Starting with rental properties in Oregon, the company expanded into the Midwest market in 2007 and has experienced consistent growth ever since. Today, Worcester Communities manages over $500 million in assets, including 3,500 apartment units across the Midwest region. The company employs a team of over 100 professionals and has achieved recognition as one of the fastest growing multifamily operators in Missouri.

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Worcester Communities continues to build on its strong foundation of family values while partnering with investors to develop thriving residential communities throughout the Midwest. But, like many other owner/operators, Worcester Communities hasn’t been immune to the effects of the “on-demand economy.” 

Worcester Communities, recognizing that residents and prospects alike expect faster replies than ever before, needed to find a way to address the lack of consistency in their communications.  Although the previous after-hours workflow reliably delivered messages to on-call staff, it lacked the technological capabilities to support efficient two-way communication with residents. Specifically, the system did not allow for text messaging or call-backs from a non-personal number, creating limitations in responsiveness and professional boundaries. Both residents and maintenance technicians recognized these gaps, highlighting the need for a more advanced solution to streamline after-hours work order management.

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The Worcester Communities team found the common denominators in all of these issues to be a lack of team bandwidth to handle repetitive tasks like tour follow-ups, and their existing technology stack falling short of expectations. With that in mind, they began to look for an AI provider to help automate inbound and outbound resident and prospect communications.

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Fortunately, Worcester Communities found EliseAI.

Worcester Communities chose to bring on the full suite of EliseAI products, including LeasingAI, ResidentAI, and VoiceAI, to help them not only improve their resident experience and lead nurturing, but also to simplify their maintenance workflows and improve their after hours call management.

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With EliseAI’s products injecting enhanced consistency into prospect and resident communications, Worcester Communities realized a wide variety of conversion improvements, including a 3% increase in lead-to-tour rates, a 1% increase in occupancy rates, and a 50bps decrease in delinquency rates. Deploying EliseAI products also resulted in significant time savings for the Worcester Communities team, with the VoiceAI product handling 11,000 calls (94% of all inbound calls) and saving thousands of hours of staffing time through automation. 

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Beyond the numerical impact of EliseAI’s products on Worcester Communities’ operational efficiency, the qualitative improvements to their resident experience and improved after-hours emergency maintenance management have been noticeable as well. The maintenance team at Worcester Communities has significantly improved their operational efficiency, leveraging AI-powered work order creation to standardize and expedite their work order resolution process.

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In addition, VoiceAI has de-escalated 13% of after hours emergency maintenance calls by helping residents resolve their issues, saving thousands of dollars in overtime payroll expenses.  In addition, the VoiceAI product allowed them to terminate their subscription to an external after hours call center entirely, generating significant savings for Worcester Communities. 

Worcester Communities was focused on finding a single AI provider who could support the entire prospect-through-resident journey, rather than trying to splice together AIs from several different providers. EliseAI is the only AI vendor with a proven set of AI tools designed to automate the full prospect-through-resident lifecycle, rather than just leasing or collections. 

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Beyond the high quality of EliseAI’s products, Worcester Communities also cited the responsive and helpful nature of the EliseAI Customer Success team as a key differentiator for them. The Worcester Communities team cited the expertise of EliseAI’s Customer Success team in managing integrations, quickly troubleshooting issues, optimizing AI performance, and incorporating customer feedback into new products as a major driver of their positive experience with the tool, helping them with change management as they rolled out EliseAI’s products across their portfolio. 

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All in all, the Worcester Communities and EliseAI story is more than just another transactional relationship between a vendor and an owner/operator—it's a true partnership between two innovative companies looking to create better prospect, resident, and employee experiences.