One of the most time-consuming aspects of being a property manager is dealing with maintenance issues reported by tenants. The back-and-forth communication is not only a time suck, but it can end up costing more money in the long run.
The recent acquisition by RealPage Inc. of the cloud-based smart answer automation system Indatus, which serves more than 11,000 apartment communities, is expected to give the company a leg up against its competition and improve the efficiency and accountability of maintenance staff.
RealPage was founded in 1998 after the acquisition of Rent Roll Inc., and has since grown to work with roughly 10,000 customers maintaining more than 9.5 million rental units throughout the nation. Dealing with all types of rental properties, including military, student, vacation and senior housing, RealPage offers resident services like online bill pay, marketing and various types of management software.
In addition, the suite of services includes renters insurance and applicant screening services. The all-in-one company now plans to add an automated call service to its laundry list of offerings.
As a former asset of ICIM Corp., Indatus will be combined with the other RealPage platforms in hopes of offering a more cohesive and efficient solution altogether. The Answer Automation service is most noted for its ability to handle emergency call situations when staff is unavailable.
The data collected during calls allows for reviewing of all interactions so property managers are confident that issues are being solved as quickly, professionally and cost-effectively as possible. All calls are recorded and have multilingual options.
“Our clients will have the option of choosing a custom combination of live agent response and answer automation for leasing or maintenance calls,” said Michael Daley, president of Level One at RealPage, in a media report. “Live agent response is the most effective way to significantly increase capture rates for leads and improve resident satisfaction on service calls, but new smart answer automation capabilities fill a need for some properties wanting a low-touch option for calls to be answered and managed.”
Level One is the Contact Center service that is offered for RealPage clients 24/7 and includes handling of inbound calls and emails. Indatus will be added to this offering bundle.
Indatus is also an additive to the marketing efforts already offered by RealPage. The Call Tracker provides unique phone numbers to be used in advertising and marketing materials, of which are then used to track the effectiveness on all marketing efforts.
Customized greetings and caller identification is intended to make lead management and generation simpler and improve revenues.
The software’s recording capabilities can help to improve communication skills overtime and thus improve the interactions with callers. The combination of live agents and automation is intended to help property managers rest assured that things get things done when they are needed and use time is spent wisely.
Daley continued, “We believe the capabilities acquired through Indatus give us the ability to offer compelling new products, including a powerful new solution that captures maintenance calls through answer automation, transcribes the calls with our live agents and injects a service request seamlessly into any property management system — greatly increasing tracking accuracy and the effectiveness of the local maintenance technicians.”
