You’re either a customer-centric company, or you’re not.

Mike Gomes has worked with some of the largest and best-known brands in the world when it comes to customer experience including Disney and Mercedes Benz Stadium. He brings that history to his role as Chief Experience Officer at Cortland, the sixth-largest owner, and operator of apartments in the country. He draws parallels between Disney, professional sports, and multifamily to think about how to build the right foundation to deliver exceptional renter experiences. 

He’s humble and quick to note that he didn’t invent a customer-centric ethos at Cortland, that it’s ingrained in their values.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Welcome to Season One of Multifamily Unpacked where we break down all things multifamily tech and speak with some of the most influential leaders in our space. I’m your host, Tyler Christiansen, CEO of Funnel Leasing. Today we sat down with Mike Gombs, the Chief Experience Officer at Cortland, one of the largest multifamily firms in the world with more than 80,000 units in their portfolio. Mike works across Cortland to develop and implement a forward-thinking resident and community living experience. After more than 20 years of customer experience leadership with top brands like Disney and AMB sports and entertainment, he now leads Cortland’s marketing, communication and design teams and brings Cortland’s brand to life across all resident experience touchpoints creating an industry-leading resident experience and fueling Cortland’s growth.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Well, welcome Mike to Multifamily Unpacked, super excited to have you as my guest today. It’s not often you get to talk shop with someone you consider a friend, as well as, a mentor. Super excited to talk with you about the industry. And the first one though, before we get into it is I’d love to understand, how did you make your way into the world of multifamily?  

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

Well, I can argue that it wasn’t necessarily intentional, but I’m glad I did. So the kind of the highlight of my career, or highlights, is I spent just over two decades with Disney all in the parks division based in Orlando. That really is the division where, you know, Disney certainly gained its reputation for guest experience. I left Disney in 2014 to move to Atlanta to help lead the creation of a fan experience platform with Mercedes Benz stadium, the Atlanta Falcons, and Atlanta United and then stumbled upon Steven DeFrancis, the CEO and founder of Cortland. I loved his kind of overall bold vision for both growth and wanting to stand out from a customer experience, and from a resident experience standpoint. I jumped into an industry I knew very little, if anything, about to try to take what I’ve learned and work within this culture to really help deliver on Stephen’s vision. So I joined in the very beginning of 2018. So I’ve been here a little less than five years in the industry. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Excellent. Well, we’re gonna circle back to that experience with Disney and Mercedes Benz, but obviously, the word that is in your title, as well as one that you use several times in the intro there is experience. So you referenced obviously coming into the multifamily industry that it was something you knew very little about. Tell me a bit more about the state of the multifamily industry and in particular, that renter experience or overall, I guess the technology experience that you found as you came into Cortland. 

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

You know, I think from a customer experience standpoint, the industry does not have the highest of reputations. There’s a reason that the notion of the word tenant and landlord has gained the reputation that it has. We are intentional, just the same way Disney was intentional about the language we use to us, they are residents and they live in a community in an apartment home. Not, you know, a tenant on a property in a unit. And then from a technology perspective, you know, if you care about the customer experience, you need to care about all of the touchpoints your customer has as they engage with you. What I noticed is that the physical real estate was really the preeminent way in which companies talked about their own customer experience. Almost everything else in the world of technology was outsourced, you know, how do you really believe that that third-party company is going to create with the same customer vision you have? A series of software that was really going to deliver on your vision for the experience. Two, is the fact that almost all of the business, whether they be the financial terms of the software itself is built around the property. I mean, it is property management and not management around the customer and serving the customer. So, when I first joined, it was a clear opportunity that multifamily was nowhere near where most of the rest of the industries had already grown and move to over the last two decades.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Yeah. Oh, that’s incredible insight, Mike. I’ll give you fair credit. Obviously, you’ve played a big influence on me and this company in the way that we talk about, and I share your belief that words matter. Sometimes when we talk about being renter-centric versus property-centric people say “That’s semantics.” No, it’s not. It really embeds into the culture, I appreciate the thoughtfulness you’ve brought to the industry in that regard, and specifically the Cortland the way you speak about your team members. I do think it’s interesting to double-click for a second before we pivot to some of your history. You highlighted customer experience and the intentionality you bring to how you discuss that customer experience. One thing I’ve been impressed by over the years working with you, is the same care, insight, and diligence that you bring to the Cortland associate experience for your team members. Maybe speak to that experience, and what you’ve been responsible for, and the way you think about the growth, that you’ve seen at Cortland, and maybe some of the opportunities for multifamily broadly. Obviously, improving the customer experience, I think that there’s universal alignment on. Sometimes I think your perspective of how important the associate experiences is maybe a bit of an outlier in the way some folks think about our associates in the industry. 

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

Yeah, no, it’s a great point, I fundamentally believe that you cannot pursue a great customer experience, while not equally committing to the pursuit of a great employee or associate experience. I think those two things can only stay incongruent for so long, before that gets exposed. So, you know, when I joined Cortland, the culture here was great, the culture was rich. What I found interesting is how committed everybody was towards those twin goals of advancing and continuing to nurture, care for and invest in the culture, while also committing to the end customer to the resident experience. So, you know, our head of talent comes from Publix, so for those of you who may not have lived in the southeast, they are a grocery store. Right. Very commoditized industry, for sure, but Publix has gained a reputation of creating a great associate experience, a great customer experience, and a great brand. And I’ll tell you, when I was at Disney, one of our VPs once took me aside and very simplistically drawn a whiteboard and said, “Mike, this is how our whole business model works at Disney, wonderful, inspired, smart, strategic, committed leadership will engender an inspired, empowered set of cast members who will do what they need to do to deliver an outstanding guest experience. And that’s how your financial results flow.” And I also believe that becomes the reflection of your brand in the marketplace. So yeah, it’s a huge commitment we make training and development, promotional opportunities, growth — as we continue to grow, and as you continue to progress in your career. We want to make it a fun place to work, we want to make it about the camaraderie, we lean into our core values. They’re not just five words on a page, they’re actually written with deep meaning. We train around those, we promote around those, and we ensure our leaders reinforce those behaviors day in and day out, with the belief being that commitment to our internal folks will reflect itself in their commitment to our customers.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Wow. That is inspiring. I love that. I think one other thing that we’ll maybe circle back to a little later, but I know under your leadership, and in partnership with your peers at Cortland, you’ve had an initiative to brand every Cortland community. I can’t help but imagine that makes your site associates feel more connected, there’s no disconnect, there is one Cortland. I have sensed that when I work with a team, the identity, the brand, there’s pride that individuals take. Obviously, I see that on LinkedIn, but I also see it when I drive past the Cortland community that from bottom to top and side to side, everyone understands those core values. There’s not a disconnect between corporate and site.

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

No, I appreciate that. You know, we tried to help people internally understand that your brand is not your logo, right, and your brand is not what marketing claims it to be. Brand instead is a reflection of everything you do and you stand for as a company in all of your interactions and all of the interactions your customer has with you. And I’ll go one step further, from your comment Tyler, we try to reinforce to our site teams in particular that they are the brand. They are the living, breathing, manifestation of the brand. They have make-or-break moments with our customers, moments that matter, every day. So, are they adhering and living up to the high standards that we establish for our service delivery? Are they modeling those core values every day? That is what is going to reflect our brand to our customers in those interaction moments as they care for our residents. Then we on the marketing side, we amplify that. We try to then let others know this is who we stand for, this is what we aspire to do in terms of helping you not just see the apartment as a place that you live, but indeed see it as a home where you know somebody is caring for not only you but caring for the community at large.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

I love that and I completely agree the brand is not just the logo, although you’ve got your Cortland’s sweater and I’ve got my Funnel sign. It is much more. When folks interact with the Cortland community, that’s what’s going to stick with them. So I want to double-click back into your Disney Experience. Obviously, you referenced that, you know, words matter, and I love that you didn’t talk about “Disney associates,” it was “cast members.” Right? There is an intentionality to using that phrase. So maybe first, in regard to your experience with Disney, and some of the influence that may have on you today. I mean, my understanding is that there is a robust training program on the park side, that the physical aspects of Disney, to ensure that brand experience. So how did that experience you spent many years at Disney translate into what you’re doing today at Cortland, and the overall experience that you’re trying to bring to this industry? 

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

You know, in some cases, it’s hard to put my finger on it. Because when you spend 20 years, really the whole formative ages of my career into becoming a director and eventually vice president of the Disney parks, where everybody regardless of role, is committed to the guest experience, whether you interact with the guest or not. So if you’re somebody in finance, you could go tell somebody how your role fits in with the show, once again, using Disney’s language. Right? Although Disney is so large, I had the fortune to sit next to really smart people representing their various functions. I tried to bring some of my learnings through osmosis in working with them, to try to bring that to our teams. Around how to think about engagement with the customer when you’re leading a CRM effort, right? Or, how to think about developing perspectives and gathering feedback. Disney is a heavy, heavy customer insight, guest insight, and research company, in order to ensure it’s constantly pushing the envelope and delivering for the guests. I was very pleased when I joined both the Falcons and Mercedes Benz stadium, but also now here at Cortland, the notion of a “voice of the customer program” had been stood up. We rely on that significantly, recognizing our customers are really threefold, but really twofold in the lens of what we’re trying to do here. One is our customers, of course, but the other is our site associates. They are the ones closest to the customer. In some cases, we’re developing software, say in partnership with you, Tyler, and Funnel, that the customer will actually never engage with, the resident doesn’t touch much of this technology, the site teams do. So making sure we treat them like the customer to get their feedback. What works? What doesn’t work? How do we make things better? What problems are you trying to solve? So that we don’t just simply think, sitting here in our corporate offices, that we have the right answers. The right answers sit with the people who are being served, or who are serving those who we want to serve. The more you can mine that. That was a big learning from Disney, for sure is how strong of a voice that operations has in all kinds of decisions at Disney. It’s not just a bunch of double-degree, super MBA, strategic planners, and finance making great decisions. So in our language, that’s not just investments team, say making a bunch of decisions, but really dialing into those two constituencies in particular, the operations teams, the site associates, and our residents to better inform what you do not only at the pro forma level, but how you choose to go to business and operate.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Excellent. Well, I really love that. And I actually, this year read Bob Iger’s “Ride of a Lifetime” book. But, you know, one of the themes of the book is partnerships, and building relationships before you need them. You referenced that term a couple of different times that you learn there, and I obviously, working as a development partner with Cortland have experienced that the level of respect that Cortland has for its partners is incredibly clear. We’ve never once felt that we weren’t anything but an equal partner with Cortland. That was a theme that Bob touches a lot on his book, as well as to your point about the strategic planning. He talks about breaking up strat planning and really empowering the team members to make some of those calls out in the field, which aligns with what you were saying. Great segway then into your experience, obviously at Disney into the Mercedes Benz stadium Atlanta Falcons, Atlanta united. Those experiences were at a different time periods. Disney obviously dates back decades. The Mercedes Benz stadium is a much newer entity. Talk to us about your experience at Mercedes Benz stadium, some of the history, when did you join as the stadium was coming to the city of Atlanta? And what are some of the things that you think back on that really influenced you today as a Chief Experience Officer from your time there. 

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

Sure, so just let me just give everybody context. So the Falcons, Atlanta United (the soccer franchise), as well as Mercedes Benz Stadium, all of those three enterprises are owned by Arthur Blank. Arthur is one of the co-founders of Home Depot. That’s where he made his wealth. He talks in his own book about these core values, I think there were six, they may have evolved to seven core values. The same core values were used in all of guiding all of the decisions, and all of our behaviors — not only as executives but throughout the entire organization — he expects his general manager, his coaching staff, and his players to abide by and to follow and to model those same core values. And although Disney, clearly, has a great value system, we weren’t as explicit about it all the time, the way Arthur was. He says that is your Northstar that really tells you who you are in your core, not only as an individual but as a collaborative group of people trying to serve other people. He firmly believes that Home Depot’s growth wasn’t because their hammers and nails were less expensive, or because they had better stock. It was because they always had the customer front of mind, and their store associates front of mind. So, I would say that some of what you’ve heard from me today, I may have implicitly gathered through my time at Disney, but it was more explicitly exposed to me in my time with Arthur. So that’s just a little bit of background. For me in particular, they broke ground in the stadium in May, and I joined in September 2014. I had a lot of opportunities to work with another unbelievably great group of people, some who came from inside of sports, some who came from outside of sports, to really go try to reimagine aspects of the fan experience, knowing several aspects needed largely remained the same. It’s a large number of people coming in a compressed period of time, to be entertained, often having no control (Arthur having no control) over the product. You can try to put the right team with the best talent, the best coaching, the best preparation, but you know what that other team is trying to beat you. It’s not like Lowe’s is in the Home Depot, parking lot duking it out with Home Depot people. Right? The ball bounces weird ways, penalties happen, injuries happen, referees make calls. The thought was “How do we continue to make sure that regardless of the outcome on the field, that you can leave that stadium saying that was a wonderful experience, I would come back again? I would bring friends. I would bring my family.” Even though you may be a diehard fan and have left a very frustrated way. So programming, the elements of the stadium, as best we could, and constantly measuring feedback we did after actions.  Let me give you an example of how we use voice of the customer in my role at Mercedes Benz stadium. So the CEO of Arthur’s organization had been a former West Point guy. He used to say, “Mike in the armed services after every action, there’s an after action.” So how do we get together to review all of our actions to determine whether what we did well, that we want to continue to pursue, and what we didn’t do as well? And how do we rectify? So we ended up building a process whereby we could survey all of the folks who attended a given event, right after the event, gather enough feedback from enough folks against all of the key critical drivers of the game day experience that we wanted to measure and that we knew mattered. Then we would sit in (what is the media room the briefing room, where the postgame conference would be) put 50 people in the room representing almost every conceivable discipline that contributes to the game day experience. We would review traffic, food and beverage, issues we had heard around WiFi potentially going out and trying to understand — not to point blame — but to recognize where we were seeing trends of improvement, where we were seeing sometimes maybe the best scores we’d ever achieved, or maybe where we had a failure or two. The goal was how do we get together in a room, review the same set of data and feedback, and then make improvements because we might have had another event three days later. We would implement those and then do the same again, and again, and again. It was a really good process. And we tried to bring some of that process here as well. You know, when we do value-add renovation projects or we implement a new way in which we’re, we’re serving our residents. If it’s a big enough effort, we try to get together and say, “What worked?  What didn’t? How do we get better the next time we may do something similarly?”

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Love that. Yeah. And to that point of voice of customer, Mike, I’ve heard you reference in previous conversations, as you brought the stadium experience to market for 80,000 attendees on a given Sunday, how intentional you were about choice and the consumer products. You mentioned, obviously, you don’t control how well the Falcons play it seems you should take some credit for Atlanta United though they fit really well as a startup franchise, but what they get to pick to eat, the WiFi experience. So in particular those consumer products, when you’re thinking about bringing a new experience to the market, how did you decide what options to serve up to the Atlanta fans who are coming to your stadium? 

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

So when you look at the research, which we didn’t have to start anywhere else, we had a bunch of consumer research. A key driver of the overall fan experience is food and beverage. Think about it when you go out, you’re going to want to have a couple of drinks or have a bite to eat. It is the lowest-scoring element. For anybody who’s ever been to a live sporting event, it is the lowest scoring element of anything that gets tracked across all of sports. The reason is, it’s a broken business model, where we know we all get gouged. So when Arthur decided, if we’re going to be a fan-centric stadium, I want to go with fan-centric pricing. How do we make the pricing fair inside the stadium, just as if you’re outside? However, it wasn’t just about putting cheap food on the table, because when you look at the sub drivers to the overall fan experience for food and beverage, there are four elements. It is variety — which you just touched on — quality, speed of service, and what’s called “value for price paid.” So those four elements. What we did is we broke down each of those four, and built concerted tactics against each of those to try to really drive in how do we ensure variety? So then, as a little aside, just answer the variety question in particular, because by the way, I could talk about this topic for on and on because it was so much fun. And it was so well received by not only the customers, but by the press as well, because nobody had ever really tried to do this before. So you look at the stadium and a lot of stadiums tried to say they have variety, because they have gluten-free food or they have vegan options, but it’s like stuck in one corner of the stadium. So we created the stadium as a system. Each of the three concourses are themselves systems, and then each quadrant, each quarter of every level, is a system. If you think about your own experience, when it’s halftime, you’re not just wandering across the whole stadium to try to go get a Heineken that might be on the other side of the stadium. We tried to intentionally program, a level of variety across the stadium, at every level of the stadium, and in each quadrant of the stadium. So that if you were somebody who wanted local food, if you want to just cut the normal staples, hot dog, hamburger fries, pizza, if you wanted craft beer, local beer, European beer, we tried to do our best to give you those options at every quadrant of the stadium just to hit on the variety part of the equation. We equally did the same commitment on quality, a significant commitment on speed of service. Not only did we achieve, like great scores, we achieved scores that I believe will never ever be touched in sports, they were so far outside of anything that had been achieved by the third-party measurement group they thought we kind of cheated the system. It’s because we delivered on something fans had been saying in their surveys for years and years and years, and no owner — who kept saying they were about the fans — was willing to do it. Arthur was willing to do it. And it was awesome to both have that pressure and that opportunity to execute on that vision.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Yeah, it’s an incredible story. To your point, it is so incredibly obvious how bad that is. Yet the fact that you solved for it and bringing to market, reasonable pricing, quality options, and local variety made national headlines. To your point, it was the first thing I remember hearing about Mercedes Benz Stadium was “Hey, you can get a Chick-fil-A sandwich at Chick-fil-A sandwich prices. It’s not $12 for a bad chicken sandwich. 

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

You may cut this out of Tyler considering what you do for a living, but I sat in the offices of the Sports Business Journal, because we were up for Sports Innovation of the Year. And I looked at them and I said, “You’ve got to remember innovation and technology are not the same thing.” I said, “I do not know who else is up for this award, but I guarantee you they are all technology-oriented firms, right?” It’s VR sports, it’s this. You can innovate just simply on the business model, or you can innovate with different processes. In our case, we never used any technology to go deliver something that was seen as so transformational. It took a lot of work, because the supply-demand dynamic changes dramatically when you’re lower prices. And once again, a lot of people small period of time. We had to build the stadium to account for an unknown amount of increased demand, because we had to hit on the speed of service aspect. We were able to do that and then continue to get better. We continue to measure, listen to feedback, and after-action. The stadium has made so many changes since then to continue to change out food offerings, continue to add more points of sale where there might have been pressure points, because they have not stopped continuing to try to get better. That’s, I think, a key model of these companies that I’ve had the great pleasure to work for, and quite frankly, learn from.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Yeah, we’ll keep that in, because I think it’s actually an important message. We’ve, we’ve learned on our side, as you know, Mike, technology doesn’t solve all the issues. I do think to your point, though, it did start with the voice of the customer, I’m sure leveraging quality survey tools, and that’s a theme I know you’ve continued with Cortland. So taking some of these learnings, one more specific question from your past, we did want to touch on, we referenced obviously, Disney parks, just a question for you. How many guests were passing through Disney World on any given day? I mean, I imagine their stats you have? Are we talking hundreds of 1000s, 10s of 1000s? What’s the order of magnitude for daily fan engagement?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

Oh, man, that’s a… you know, I probably don’t know the answer. I mean, I can certainly kind of speculate on it. But if we take a normal kind of summer day, just in the parks alone. Now remember, Disney also has 35,000 hotel rooms, resorts, waterparks, sports complex, a retail, dining and entertainment district that is second to none probably in traffic. You mean, in a simultaneous standpoint? Considering Disney’s properties are physically the size of San Francisco Disney World in Orlando, that’s true. It’s twice the size of Manhattan. It’s probably a quarter million people. That’s not that’s on an average day, and that’s why it takes 70,000 cast members to deliver that city infrastructure and customer-facing experience that Disney, you know, has become known for. Now, I haven’t been there since 2014. I mean, so Disney has obviously continued to invest and make changes and try to continue to deliver on what it’s known for. That’s another theme, right? You can’t just say, “Hey, we got to number one, or we’re regarded as great.” Everybody else is chasing. So you’ve got to continue to have that DNA in your culture to continue to want to go better. Arthur, by the way, had a sign above his desk that said, “there is no finish line.” So even though we may have achieved number one in food and beverage won this award, he’s like, “What are you going to do next? Seriously. What are you going to do next?” So he continuously challenged us to not just rest on our laurels, but continue to push in the name of the customer.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Yeah, that’s perfect. You went exactly where I was hoping you would go with that. Because of the scale of these organizations, often, I think we in multifamily sometimes feel as if, “Oh, we’re small business compared to that scale.” But in reality, you know, on any given day, to your point, there can be over 200,000 individuals, perhaps passing through Disney parks in Orlando. On a given game day in Atlanta, you know, 80,000 attendees. But Cortland has a scale today of 80,000 apartment homes, which each of those likely has one and a half to three people in them. So we’re talking hundreds of thousands of renters, whose home is in your building. And one thing that Mike, you, and I have aligned on since early day one, you just spoke to this, this desire to constantly improve. One of my, I guess, pet peeves in multifamily, when I joined the industry, was this transactional mentality as if we leased a resident and then we never heard of them again. When they’re still living in our building and hopefully will live with us for many years. What do you take away in terms of loyalty and lifetime customer value, from your experience at these two wonderful organizations that perhaps has influenced the way you think about those residents who call the Cortland community home?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

Yeah, you know, at Disney, we hope that you loved your experience so much that you’ll go home and tell your friends and you’ll come back. I mean, it’s kind of that simple. What Disney used to call “intent to return” was the measure that we continue to monitor one of the key measures. And the same thing at the stadium, you know, we know that you may only come once, because it’s a concert, and you may not be a sports fan, but we hope that you enjoy the concert enough that you’ll next time there’s an artist you want to see you’ll come back. So you know, at Cortland’s it was hard and it still is hard, quite frankly. When the software is built around the property, and it’s built around the unit number as your core, like kind of essence, and not built around the customer, it’s hard to track that customer. You know, we know anecdotally, we’ve had folks who said “I loved living where I lived in Raleigh, and then I had to move to Atlanta or Austin, and I just happened to hope you guys had apartments there, you did and it worked out. And now I’m in my second or my third Cortland community.” So the hope is for us that we can create more than did you renew, but did you choose to retain? This notion of at some for some period of your lifetime as a renter (and maybe that’s six or seven years, maybe it’s 15 years) and if you are in the markets where we are, and you really like the experience we’ve hopefully delivered for you, then our equal hope is that you’ll be so inclined that the next place that you need to live, you’re going to first consider, is there a Cortland community available? And does it meet my needs? The product isn’t always going to be exactly the same, because we acquire and don’t build. But, we hope that the level of service, care, and hospitality, that we strive to deliver day in and day out, in caring not only for you, but also for the real estate, so you can be proud of where you live, that you will find that elsewhere. So, but the underlying systems that allow us to understand the customer at an individual level, so that we can treat him or her personally doesn’t exist in the industry, or hasn’t, will say existed in the industry, which is, you know, what, what we’re embarking on now.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Perfect. Yeah, and I agree, I think obviously, even with, you know, our partnership with you, we recognize there’s a lot of systems in place, a lot of processes in place, that have to be implemented as a foundation in order for us to really understand that lifetime value. It’s been remarkable to see Cortland embrace that across the board, to offer that option to the residents. 

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

These are new ideas, right. So I know that part of the theme here had been like, Hey, what are you bringing from Disney? Or what am I bringing from, you know, Mercedes Benz? And yes, I’ve brought things, you know, maybe to the table. But as I mentioned, our Head of Talent is from Publix. And she brings a wealth of great experience, history, ideas, our Head of Operations, who has not only been in the industry, which on one hand, makes him a real expert in the industry. But he’s also the same guy who will walk out the door and walk back in and challenge every assumption about the industry, as well. So this is an environment of leadership across the organization, who really wants to embrace this collective delivery, of a great associate and resident experience. So yes, I may bring some outside experience, but believe me, the multitude of the great ideas that are coming and bubbling to the top really come from the collaborative environment and the culture that Cortland has established.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Love that. Yeah, I have absolutely experienced that. That’s a great segway into, you know, we’ve talked a little about the past, and we want to focus on the present now. So in your opinion, what would you say is the biggest challenge, or challenges, that multifamily as an industry is facing today.

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

So I’ll just dial it in on one key piece, and there’s a lot to unpack as part of it. And that’s the ability to serve the customer, as an individual. So we tend to treat the entirety of the community, of 350 customers, and we tend to treat all of those residents broadly the same. The notion of creating much more highly-personalized engagement and interaction, the way that by the way, all of the other companies we engage with across other industries do, whether they are airlines like Delta, or whether they are hospitality companies like you know, Marriott, or whether, of course, the hyper-personalization that we got through Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, etc, are what the customer is becoming used to. But in multifamily, there’s still so little we actually really know about the customer. The data largely sits in disparate systems that are connected around the customer, they’re connected around the unit, and really understanding what are the motivations, needs, and desires? Because your needs, Tyler, living in the same community as me could be very different. And therefore, what are the needs that I have, that you have, that allows us to better serve you. Not to better market to you, but to better serve you so that you actually feel you’re not a number on a door. But you’re Tyler Christiansen and Cortland knows who you are, and is trying to do the best it can to personalize aspects of its engagement with you. We may not be able to personalize the whole experience. Of course, your apartment is your apartment, the community is the community, the amenities are the amenities, but how do we better personalize our engagement with you? So you feel that we’re talking to you on the terms you want to be spoken with, engaged with, served, etc?

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Yeah, I love that. And you know, without giving away, any of Cortland’s secret sauce, you gave some great data about stadium experience that I found really enlightening about the fact that there are, you know, food and beverage choices historically ranked poor in stadiums, and I immediately thought of terrible baseball stadiums I’ve been to with terrible nachos. So it was obvious when you hear the data like that makes sense. Do you have any data points you could point to and specifically you reference kind of, obviously the voice of the customer, but really understanding my experiences as a father and my experience at your community versus perhaps a, you know, young college student who’s renting there, maybe give me some anecdotal examples of voice of customer that has been surprising to you at Cortland’s and how you’ve actioned that data? Or some of the ways in which you’re staying keeping your finger on the pulse of what it feels like to be a Cortland resident today?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

So, you know, in the stadium, as we just talked about food and beverage, we didn’t need to go look for other things to go do. There was a body of research that told us what we were already largely deficient at, as both a singular entity, the Falcons, but also across the enterprise, I mean, across the whole, the whole of sports. Similarly, if we look at the research, you know, from customers within multifamily, as well as specific to us, there continues to be an opportunity to do a better job with communication. I don’t just mean letting people know that you’re going to be pressure washing the parking deck on Thursday, but for that ability to deliver more personalized communication. When you have a need as a resident, how well are we attentive to you, responsive to you, and treating you like an individual? Because we know enough about you, as opposed to just simply either ignoring you entirely, failing to actually follow up or follow through, or just simply saying, “These are our policies.” Right? Agents that are great at customer service, understand how to treat the customer with that level of customization, without breaking the rules. We’re not talking about going into Starbucks and getting a free coffee, just because that’s what you wanted. Right? The communication aspect, feels to me, that has been largely an unsolved problem that has plagued the industry. Yet time and time again, it’s a number one issue that either drives or detracts from your overall community OSAT, and particularly your management OSAT scores, you know, is communication. Some of that is training in service, but other parts of that are having the capabilities and the focus to recognize how important that is, and then going, “How do we help solve that? How do we make it easier for Cortland to be more responsive, more personalized, more accurate in its information, while still having a heart?” One of our core values is Listen With Your Heart and Your Mind. Right? So there’s a lot to listen to logically, but how do we empathize with the customer so that we can serve you and you feel, even if you didn’t get what you wanted, you at least felt they listened. They were quick to respond. They helped explain, and I got it. Okay. So we’re working on doing some of what seems very boring, very mundane basics, because I’m just not sure the basics are great. Give you a side example, on the stadium, we could have chased all the snazzy new toys, we could, we could have done an entire VR experience, right? And gotten a bunch of press on it. But we’re like, wait a minute, food and beverage is core to all people who come to the stadium, and we do a bad job with it, and so does everybody else? How do we think differently, to not just ignore that basic, and go try to do a bunch of other snazzy things. Right? In my mind, the hierarchy of needs of the customer start with the foundation, and start with the basics. You’ve got to get the basics right, you have to understand what they are, first of all, what is most important to your customers and get them right. That isn’t going to create a customer who loves and adores you. You will at that point, have met their base expectations. Then, as you move upstream in that hierarchy, how do you help them go from being satisfied, to feeling loved, to feeling appreciated, to feeling valued, to feeling like we treated you like a personal customer who gave to us a significant chunk of your income in order to call this place a home for some period of time? That is kind of our area of focus and how we set up ourselves, some of that technology, some of that process, some of that training and development. To really lean into getting those basics right all the time, so the people go, “No matter when I have an issue or concern. My goodness, they’re so attentive to me.” That has been largely overlooked in our industry, and a lot of companies we’re not alone, a lot of companies are aspiring to do this. It’s just been hard to do, because of so many systemic issues that need to get changed, transformed, thrown out, or reinvented.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Yeah, you nailed several of the areas of inquiry that I was curious about. And it really leads me to think, you’ve given great examples of the voice of the customer. Is there a standardized data point that Cortland’s uses? You know, we in software, use the NPS score, the CSAT score, you’ve referenced a few, is there a single metric that Cortland things to say that means the renter is having a great experience? Have you standardized any of that, or is it more nuanced than that? Because you reference kind of the various stages of the renter journey.

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

It is definitely more nuanced than that, we are heavy users of Kingsley’s survey platform and have been for years and as I mentioned, we also have our own voice of the customer who does we do so many ad hoc surveys that could be about aspects of the experience that largely are not talked about are covered in Kingsley. We really want to dig in and understand the quality of the fitness offerings, the wellness offerings, as consumers have changed, you know since COVID maybe some of their needs have changed. How do we serve them better in that regard? And not just simply program our fitness centers, as we did in 2019, you know, so we do a lot of both ad hoc stuff to gain more insights and knowledge. Some are survey based, some are focus group based, some are just simply reading all of the open-ended feedback that we’ll get from online reviews from surveys, etc. The one that we kind of look at his overall customer service, now granted, you may interpret overall customer service differently than I may or differently than a respondent. We kind of know, when we think we’ve received really good customer service, that could be talking, they might, in their head, have their maintenance staff in mind, they may have the front office staff in mind. They might have had, you know, can I get the customer service I want when I engage with your website, or your resident portal, we don’t exactly know what’s comprising that, but that’s okay. We feel that that’s a good litmus test. We’ve been able to build true correlations between the quality of what our residents say, overall customer service is, which is an internal measure nobody sees that, and then tying that to our online reputation, and ensuring those continued to align in correlation with one another. One has an internal measure. The other one, is our external facing representation of that measure. If that makes sense. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

It does, it actually leads to a question that’s not on the list, Mike, but it immediately sparked in my mind. One of the things that I love about working with you is that you bring this, obviously a wealth of experience in the experience domain, but also technology. But one of the things that is unique about your purview is that you also sit on the Investment Committee at Cortland, and think about the financials and the hard numbers. Obviously, you get to work with great leadership, and you mentioned Steven before, but I would imagine you have investment partners that may not understand the correlation that you just articulated of customer satisfaction to online reputation to hard NOI. Right? And Cortland has had tremendous growth and success over the last five-plus years growing the platform. Is that something with your position as the Chief Experience Officer, but also having a voice in which acquisitions you do and the overall investment strategy? How do you draw a line between these different kinds of softer metrics that are just overall satisfaction, and some of the hard NOI that obviously is going to be driving the business?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

Sure, so remember, Cortland’s, a vertically integrated company, a lot of companies say they’re vertically integrated, but we do operate fundamentally everything we own. So when we are making an acquisition, we want to make sure that the folks representing operations — that includes everything from marketing to talent, our ability to source talent, to maintenance, to service, — understand that they have a voice in those meetings. In some cases, it may be less about the physical asset we’re buying than it is making sure we’re putting the right budget together from an operating expense standpoint that can allow us to achieve what those proforma expectations are. So that’s one, two, you know, if you saw our investment, marketing materials, our pitch materials that we go to capital markets with, there are a lot that we do talk about, about our operating platform. Right? We of course, talk about what we believe is our investment prowess, and the unique way in which we underwrite and model our deals in a proprietary way that we think suit Cortland well, and have served us well, historically. But then once we bring those on board, yes, we’ve either absolutely tied and correlated, the notes are focused on the associate and are focused on the resident into a level of what we believe is our performance based on how comps are measured. Or, we don’t actually make the connection, we just drop a bunch of breadcrumbs that at some point, we hope somebody then says, “Okay, this makes sense.” Right? Especially when you think about, you know, I remember when our marketing team started really focusing on online reputation, because it was really an absent focus broadly across the industry. It isn’t anymore, right. But there was a focus on that aspect of our representation of our brand. We care about our brand. Therefore, you must you need to care about your reputation. Well, when you help an investor or somebody else understand well, how do you make a decision on what hotel to stay at? You know, if you’re in a market that you’ve never been to? Now, in some cases, there’s loyalty points, but if you’re somebody that doesn’t travel a lot, you’re reading online ratings and reviews, how many people just bought things for the Christmas or holiday and ended up reading reviews of what they were buying, like, “Oh, I’m gonna buy an air fryer for somebody. Well, I don’t know if this is a good air fryer.” So you’re reading the ratings. You’ve seen the ratings and reading the reviews. So when you build that it changes everybody’s mindset outside of multifamily. And then when you go, now, why wouldn’t that make sense when you’re about to shell out the most money you shell out for anything the whole year, your rent? Why wouldn’t you spend the amount of time trying to understand? If you read the reviews, recognize how much of them do not talk about your pool, your fitness center, you know, the landscaping. I’m not saying you take those for granted. But it was just like at Disney, people came back, you know what they talked about Disney and and talked about the rides and attractions and unbelievable spectaculars. You almost took those for granted. It was, “I can’t believe how clean the place is. I can’t believe how nice everybody is. And I can’t believe how safe I feel.” Think about those three things. The massive Disney Experience boiled down to what people talked about the most cleanliness, how nice the people were, and how safe you felt, compared to say your everyday life. When you go read a lot of reviews, recognize how much it talks about the people. Where they served? Were they not served? And that’s really what they’re talking about. Often it’s you know, sometimes it may be about the upkeep of the property for sure. So I don’t want to diminish that, but that gives us kind of areas to really dial in and focus to recognize those soft sides of the living experience beyond the product. Right? It’s they might fall in love with the look, appeal, and location of the product. But they’re really going to love you if they felt like the product not only lived up to its expectations, but the people exceeded their expectations, in the way in which they were served. Even if they have to move, I’m getting married, I’m buying a house, I’m moving to Chicago where you don’t have any properties. They hopefully will tell their friends say, “Well, if you’ve got to live somewhere, you should choose Cortland place because that’s the best place I’ve ever lived.” Those are the types of things that we’re trying to do every day.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Well, I can tell you, Mike as a Tampa local, the name Cortland. When I tell people what does Funnel do? “Well we help companies like Cortland,” has brand equity now people get it. They say, “oh yeah, I’ve seen the beautiful community or I have a friend who lives there.” So it is paying dividends, and so I won’t. I won’t ask you to divulge that a lot of the exciting future plans that Cortland is working on, but this is the portion of the podcast we’re going to wrap up talking about the future. Given that you play a pivotal role for Cortland’s, on the experience and on the technology, you know, if you were a young entrepreneur, taking venture capital trying to solve a specific problem in the multifamily vertical, where is there a gap of solutions? Where would you invest your time and energy resources to try and solve a hole in the experience? Now you referenced earlier, it’s not always technology. Right? So maybe it’s just the business model disruption, but what is an innovation that you personally think needs to be solved in our industry?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

I think once again, without kind of divulging you know, any inside baseball, I do believe we’re pursuing a few of those. I think that as in our partnership with you and Funnel in particular, you know, as we’ve continued to kind of push, guide, cajole, and plead with Funnel to continue to advance its platform. We’re doing so because we think it will allow us to do the things I’ve mentioned earlier, better serve our residents at an individual level. Five years from now, we still won’t be there. I mean, it’s gonna take a long while not because the technology isn’t there, but you then have to change the way you think. You gotta change your processes. We’re looking to change our website to have so much more personalization in the web experience, which so many websites you interact with every single day do, but not multifamily. Right. So, that’s part of it. I also think that, you know, you look at companies like CoStar RealPage, and others that have a massive treasure trove of data, and you look at how the data on a lot of the multifamily aspects is all pushed towards investments. Right? How do you use data to allow you to make, you know, hopefully find alpha in your decision-making, in your underwriting. Right? In your precision to predict rents and what have you, and that’s all valid, good and will absolutely continue. But the notion of predictive modeling, on the operation side, largely has been absent, because there’s still so little we actually know about the customer. Like, if I asked the multifamily operator today, if you have 350 residents, how many of them work from home? And the actual answer is, “I don’t know. I don’t know. I can guess.” Right. I might know Steve works from home because I know Steve and he comes into the office to get coffee every day. But that’s not an ability to serve at scale, on a personalized level based on what in this case, Steve’s needs may be. Who uses your fitness center and how often do they use it? You know? How is the dynamic of COVID at a data level, changing the operation on your property. Right? As you get more packages, and more food deliveries, and more noise complaints, and more pressure on parking, because maybe more people are working from home. So anyway, like, there’s so much more we can know. And then as we put more and more of that data together. Data about the real estate itself, data about the market, but also data about the customer, and put all those together, how can it unlock things we may not have even been dreaming about? But once you start putting them together, you start recognizing, “Wow, I had no idea this happened this frequently? How would we go solve that? prevent it from happening? Or better solve or resolve that?” It’s a very abstract answer, I think Tyler but, recognizing what other industries do with data and how little we’ve been able to do operationally besides focused on your lease metrics. And maybe revenue management, there’s still so much better. If a company wants to serve its customers better, it’s got to know its customers better. And to do that, and then put that in a data model that allows you to better predictively serve those customers is a brass ring that we’ll be reaching for years, and we’ll see how much better we can get there. Hospitality is there. Right? The Marriotts, Hiltons, and Hyatts of the world have been there for 20 years. Multifamily is still quite a ways away, but we’re seeing lots of companies, great companies in our space, continue to move in that direction as well. That’s exciting. That will raise the reputation of everybody for the industry at large. The industry, at large, continues to go from, we’re not very highly regarded, because we’re just thought of as the “landlord” to “wow, they really do try to go above and beyond to treat to treat me well when I live here.” That will help the reputation that, “Hey, you know, what multifamily has really become somebody who cares about its customers.”

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Yeah, well, I know Cortland is doing their part in that. I think even the strategy that you’ve developed over the five years you’ve been at Cortland, it’s clear that you’re leveraging that data, and obviously data hungry. So you referenced predictive analytics, I’m gonna ask you to put on your prediction hat is there any technology that you look at that you believe five years on from now will play a much bigger role? Aside from the obvious, you know, more data, hopefully, or that could be obsolete? You know, if we look back, you reference websites, you know, websites and ILSs are constantly changing. So any big predictions now that we’re heading into a very unique macro environment where interest rates are rising, renter demand is decreasing, labor markets are still tight. What do you think changes fundamentally about our industry over the next three to five years?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

So the simple answer is, I don’t really know. The pieces that we are embarking on now haven’t been delivered or executed upon yet to know how much of an impact they’re going to have, hopefully, positively on our ability to serve the residents, that then reveals the next tranche of opportunity that isn’t being effectively addressed. I am very interested to continue to see the evolution of AI. I think, as AI continues to improve. You mentioned earlier about the transaction focus of this industry. And, you know, I’ve been fond of saying, we want to move from transactions to interactions. Machines, machines are really good at transactions. Humans are really good at interactions. Now, you could argue maybe there’s some AI out there that’s getting better at interactions, but we believe if the rote, repetitive things, you know, I don’t need a human to respond to a resident who at seven o’clock at night, wants to ask a very specific question of, “I’m thinking of getting I’m thinking of getting a pet. What’s your pet policy? Do you have any restricted breeds?” When they get an answer to that today, the site team comes in tomorrow goes through their litany of emails, or phone calls, or things they’ve got to do. Following up with prospects and vendors and residents, maybe you get an answer some number of hours later in the day. Now, that may be fine for you, you weren’t going to get a dog the next morning. But what if we could send you an answer instantly? With a link to more detailed information, you’re more satisfied as a customer, but we removed what was a very simple transactional kind of response to your question away from the human. Then the human can have deeper time to focus on other interactions, whether that be with you, or other residents. That evolution of AI that we’re starting to see more prevalently find itself into other industries is going to be something really interesting to watch over the next several years.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

I love that. Yeah, I completely agree. I think there’s a world of possibility we haven’t even examined yet. So, Mike, this has been incredibly fun you and I love talking shop. And I really appreciate the time, we want to round out the conversation with what we call the Funnel five. So we’re going to throw five quick questions at you. So first on that list is what is your favorite non-work app?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

Dude, I’m a music guy, man. Spotify tells me I’m in like the top 91% of users for music. I don’t think I like silence. So I’ve gotta go with Spotify. I do use Sirius XM in my car, but Spotify on the road. And I can go on and on. But I know these are supposed to be quick answers. So I will leave at that.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Spotify good one favorite book or podcast at the moment?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

You know, the last time I answered this question, I gave an answer no one expected, which is “I don’t really read books.” And then I got a Kindle. I consume a lot of information. I just didn’t necessarily dedicate to books. I just read a book from Neil DeGrasse Tyson, the astronomer, that somebody sent it to me as not because I like astronomy. He was just challenging thinking of humans on Earth, when you put it in the context of the universe, and how petty some of our arguments may look between geographic borders, or politics, or religion, etc. Things we certainly feel passion about. He talks about as question you just asked, the difference between linear thinking, and he talks about these examples how people just think 30 years from now, it’s going to be more than the advancement of what’s already here. But the exponential thinking ends up going in directions we could have never imagined. Because if you would have asked everybody in the 90s what it looks like 30 years from now, we wouldn’t have just had one fax machine, we would have had three fax machines. Right? Now, we never could have imagined the future. 30 years is an interesting benchmark. And he really lays out an awesome funny argument about how it’s hard to think in an exponential way. The book, by the way, is called Starry Messenger,

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Starry Messenger. I’ll check that out. It sounds like a good read. Is there a philanthropic cause or something you carry passion for that if you retired tomorrow, that you would I mean, you’ve got way too much energy to retire. So is there something outside of work that you’re very passionate about making an impact with?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

I would say not as much right now. But it’s something that I would say was my biggest passion as I probably coached about 19 seasons of Little League Baseball, including travel ball and all-stars, with my boys with my daughter, and softball. So many young people that I got to not only teach the love of the game, the fundamentals of the game, and a higher end skill of the game, but also all of the ways in which it means to be a teammate, and to learn how to fail. Baseball, as they say, is a sport of failure. But man, I do love it. So you know, maybe I could run Little League somewhere, someday.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

That’s excellent. That’s a great passion. Any Mike, you’ve never shied away from opinions, but are there any opinions, this could be you know, personal this can be experienced, this can be about baseball, any opinions you feel so strongly, you’d put it up on a billboard?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

I’ll give you two. One is, maybe it’s just how I’m wired, I assume trust. I fundamentally have disagreed with the statement that trust is earned. Like why in a business or other setting do I have to assume that you’re not who you say you are? That you’re not trying to bring your best self? You know, and that happens across everywhere. People say, “Oh, trust is earned.” And I’m like, “Well, trust can be lost. But I don’t know why it has to be earned.” I don’t know why we don’t assume trust? That’s one. And two is with respect to work in particular, as I, as I’ve shared with many folks, I may have customer experience in my title, but I would argue you’re either a customer experience company, or you’re not. There’s no such thing as having a single person in charge of the customer experience is by no means am I that in this company, there’s so many people who commit every single day, whether they directly interact with the customer, or even our investments team now, who were there underwriting are looking at Google ratings and reviews, and thinking about what our operations teams needs to succeed. Because they’re the reason those pro formas eventually succeed isn’t just because we bought a great piece of real estate. I love the fact that when I joined this company, this company did not need to be turned around. Steven had already focused them on the customer experience, the whole company is committed to it. That’s why I say you’re either a customer experience company or you’re not.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Well, that’s a fantastic segway into my last question, which is, you know, as somebody Mike who influenced our tagline a domain, which we own, it’s on my wall behind me, renter-centric. To Mike Gomez or to Cortland, what does renter-centric mean?

Mike Gomes, Cortland  

Think it means just that. We have a little diagram that we put in our investment materials that shows all of these different functions that comprise our vertically integrated platform. Right? And some are technology and some revenue management, etc. We put the resident in the middle, we don’t put a little piece of real estate in the middle, we put the resident in the middle. All of the decisions, and all of the things that the various constituencies and groups are making, are doing so with the resident in mind. So I think being residents centric, just really means that whether it’s the product you develop, the renovations we pursue, the programming we curate, the hospitality-like service we aspire to. All of those are just some of the elements of why we try to do the right thing for the right reason, because we’ve got the resident really in the center of our thoughts. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing  

Well, Mike, as someone who’s had the pleasure of working alongside you for a number of years, a lot of people say that you mean it. You do it every day, you challenge us, you know constantly to put that renter in the center of what we’re building and the way that we operate. So thank you, I’ve enjoyed this conversation, Mike, and I’m sure our listeners will as well. So thank you for your time. Thanks for listening to this episode of Multifamily Unpacked. If you enjoyed what you heard here, leave a review and rating on Apple podcasts and follow Funnel on LinkedIn.