The internet has certainly made a splash in senior living. The majority of prospects research options online, according to Google. They’ll browse listing services. Check your own website. Scour reviews.   But when it comes time to make a decision, those who call in for more information are the most likely to convert. In fact, they generate 10-15 times more revenue than web leads do, and they convert 30% faster. The internet may be the new hot, but the phone is still king of conversions. Which makes you wonder why so many senior living operators don’t focus more on excellent phone service. Our clients have told us – and we’ve seen on our end – that about 50% of inquiry calls are missed. And a good 20% of calls come in after hours. These are missed leads, pure and simple. The problem extends to resident calls, too. Poor or slow responses from management factors heavily into resident satisfaction. In an industry where quality care is often the differentiator, you can’t afford to ignore service requests or emergency calls, no matter when they come in. So what’s the answer? A flexible contact center solution that can pick up the phone for you. It’s called RENTCafé Connect. Built into the Yardi Senior Living Suite, the digital answering service acts as a seamless extension of your office. From auto-attendants to live agents, RENTCafé Connect can handle your phone lines whenever your own team is unavailable. That means no more missed calls – and no more missed opportunities. Not convinced? Here are five ways RENTCafé Connect can help you grow your occupancy while keeping your current residents happy. Track the source of incoming calls. You get 15 toll-free tracking numbers with RENTCafé Connect, which means you can use...

Stress comes in different forms. The anticipation of relocating, weighing our housing options, and investing in a new lease or mortgage all lead to stress. When we’re hit with stress, we seek human interaction for help and comfort. Yet in the age of efficiency, stressed-out prospects and residents are channeled to self-service technologies like websites, apps, and robot assistants. When we fail to balance automation with the human touch, we distance ourselves from our customers and our relationships falter. Humans Prefer Humans to Close Deals Harvard Business School conducted a study on how people feel about their investment choices with and without the assistance of a human advocate. Researchers published their findings in an article in Harvard Business Review. The study reveals that, “anxious customers interacting through self-service technology feel dissatisfied with their decisions even when those decisions appear aligned with their goals. Their dissatisfaction reduced their trust in the service provider.” Researchers were able to boost investor confidence and decrease anxiety with the addition of human interaction. In some cases, the human was a peer. In other cases, the human was an investment expert. In both scenarios, “when people had the ability to connect with another person – either an expert or a peer – the deleterious effects of anxiety were offset. “ The ability to interact with a human also increases the likelihood of closing a deal. In the experiment, applicants moving forward with the deal jumped from 64 percent to 80 percent when customers receiving automated messages were also invited to interact with a human for guidance. RentCafe Connect: Streamlined Efficiency with a Human Touch As a software company, we take pride in the efficiencies that we can offer through automated services. But we also acknowledge that the human element is essential...

Established in 1984, Ellis, Partners in Management Solutions, (EPMS) is one of the multifamily industry’s most respected providers of management and marketing consulting services. EPMS’ management mystery shopping reports have made it an industry standard in the performance evaluation of leasing professionals. EPMS scores are a very effective way to tell if your leasing staff is helping or hurting your properties. But what do you do when you consistently score in the 90th percentile in secret shopping reports? Some people might sit back and congratulate themselves. Not us. When this recently happened at our RentCafe Connect customer connection center, we decided to change the test. The Problem This sounds like an awesome problem to have, right? On the face of it, we agree. Everyone likes to be told they’re doing well. But we also knew that the scores were based on objective criteria about general telephone presentation and customer experience. Sure, we were providing really good general service as far as call centers go. But were we actually delivering the specialized support our clients deserved? RENTCafé Connect is an incoming communications center that exclusively supports residential Yardi Voyager users. Certainly we could do better. The Solution After listening to client feedback to better understand their expectations, we realized we needed to change our approach to better align with their needs, even if it meant initially scoring lower on our secret shopping reports. “Our team knew that we needed to customize testing and scoring to ensure that our customer connection agents provide the best possible support for our client’s properties,” said Joe Hendrix, vice president of RentCafe Connect at Yardi. So that’s what we did. In May of last year, we altered our EPMS form to match the criteria our clients are using. The new,...