Centralization: Where People, Processes, and Tech Align
Learn how Funnel clients – Camden and Morgan Properties – centralized their leasing operations, to insulate their business.
Centralization can mean different things to different apartment management company models, and it’s a topic that keeps picking up momentum. This time and cost-saving approach is THE topic of the multifamily industry that is (still) strapped with talent shortages, and needs to innovate to improve its operations.
Creating a fail-proof renter experience is something multifamily property management companies (PMC) have been aiming to perfect for years. Centralization is an emerging concept for multifamily PMCs, and promises more efficient operations, happier teams, and renters.
Here are two mini case studies about Funnel clients and industry leaders, Camden Property Trust and Morgan Properties that leverage the platform for greater productivity and improved the day-to-day for leasing teams and renters.
Funnel Is Part of the Team.
“The Funnel Team is incredible; we consider them an extension of our team. They listen to help build solutions to solve our problems.”
— Kristy Simonette, SVP Strategic Services and Chief Information Officer Camden Property Trust
Funnel Is Purpose-Built and Intuitive.
“Funnel CRM is a ‘purpose-built’ product that is concise and intuitive to what we need. The team at Funnel have been great partners to us thus far, working together to develop more innovative approaches to our sales process.”
—Samantha McQuown, VP Business Operations, Morgan Properties
Camden Centralizes to Significantly Reducing Marketing Spend
Kristy Simonette, Senior Vice President, Strategic Services, Camden Property Trust, said her company uses Funnel as its “complete leasing platform. We leverage it as a CRM with marketing automation and a slick virtual leasing agent. It integrates nicely with our property management software (in this case, RealPage).”
She said the centralized leasing office (CLO) helps Camden to accurately capture and better act on all leads driven to the 159 Camden communities, totaling more than 59,000 apartment homes.
“This alone allowed us to significantly reduce our marketing spend in 2021 and it allows Camden’s onsite teams to work across all Camden communities,” she said. “Each customer is tracked, all interactions are documented and organized for all Camden staff to see and understand the interactions (regardless of communication channel) of each customer’s journey.”
Camden Capitalizing on Cross-Selling
Cross-selling has always been a worthy approach to use when leasing agents determine that prospects might be happier living at another nearby community in their portfolio. When there is a connection with a qualified renter, the sales team doesn’t want to lose them.
Simonette said previous CRM platform iterations were less efficient “and a bit clunky” when it came to sharing strong prospects and their data with a sister community in an instant.
Camden now uses the efficiencies created by its CLO by combining multiple communities to form what it calls “nests.” Because agents can easily work leads for multiple communities, Camden is “able to deploy resources where they are needed and when they are needed,” she said.
Simonette added, “With the automation, it takes less manpower to accomplish what we used to have to do 100% manually. This has opened up great possibilities for earning potential for our sales professionals as they can now sell across portfolios of communities. This has been a game-changer for us during this talent war we are all experiencing. We have leveraged the platform to the fullest and we have not missed a beat in covering higher-than-normal open positions.”
Simonette said the virtual agent used in Camden’s CLO is able to handle hundreds of simple interactions simultaneously.
“This reduces the load on our contact center,” she said. “Also, the automated drip campaigns help our onsite staff by dripping marketing messages automatically and at the right time during the customer journey. Self-service scheduling for tours is also a big-time saver.
“This makes us available to provide great service to our residents. Our retention rates are super high; even though we cannot attribute all of this to CLO operations, we believe it plays a part because our onsite staff are less busy with the administration piece of managing the sales cycle.”
Funnel CEO Tyler Christiansen said, “By providing a simple, seamless and personalized renter journey, we help leading multifamily companies lease faster and more efficiently. For owners and operators on legacy property management systems feeling stuck between a bunch of disconnected point solutions, or giving up their trusted accounting systems, we have a better approach.”
Morgan Automates Mundane Tasks
Samantha McQuown, Vice President – Business Operations, Morgan Properties, said her company have seen positive results in its efforts.
“We can now more effectively manage a single prospect’s inquiries across multiple communities versus managing the same prospect multiple times across multiple communities individually by using this renter-centric solution,” McQuown said. “We have the capability to easily identify and track our prospects on their unique leasing journey across multiple Morgan Properties communities.”
She said her regional team has gained “tremendous efficiencies” within its lead management process. “Our sales team has been able to effectively communicate with and manage more leads in less time versus our standard model of CRM technology. We are excited to see this continued evolution.”
Centralized leasing platforms like Funnel’s automate mundane tasks and omni-channel communications to manage the entire renter journey. They use a natural language processing virtual leasing agent that works across SMS, email and chat to respond to inquiries and sort them appropriately based on their quality.
The Funnel Philosophy
Funnel exists so multifamily operators don’t have to pick between antiquated monopolies or single solution challengers. After decades of the status quo, operators are no more efficient, and renters still dread the process of leasing an apartment.
We fixed that with a platform that turns the entire business model on its head.
Renter Management Software is a new category of connected tools built around the renter. The software delivers a consistent, connected experience from first inquiry through years of renewals. All this while simultaneously saving operators quantifiable money through the smaller, and happier teams that only a renter-centric platform can enable.
Learn how your company can leverage a customized approach to centralization through Funnel’s platform.