At least 70% of your residents are ignoring your surveys. So why are we basing retention strategies around the loudest 30%?
Resident retention matters more than ever. With rent growth slowing and resident expectations rising, having an inside look into the resident experience isn’t just ‘nice to have’—it’s your competitive advantage.
And the industry is taking note.
In the last four years, the percentage of multifamily property management companies reporting resident retention goals above 70% or more has tripled. This trend suggests companies are seeing retention as a direct, measurable impact on their NOI, and are shifting focus to retain existing residents.
There’s just one problem.
Despite decades of advancements in technology, most operators are still flying blind with traditional survey tools. In fact, property managers ranked understanding and anticipating the needs of residents as the most challenging hurdle for the second year in a row.
So if surveys aren’t telling the full story, how can teams improve retention when a vocal minority is shaping the strategy?
Why just relying on resident surveys can’t be trusted
Multifamily surveys aren’t inherently flawed—but the way we use them in 2025 is. Designed for a different era of communication and consumer behavior, most multifamily surveys today feel clunky, and increasingly out of step with how renters interact with their communities.
Let’s look at a few places traditional surveys fall short.
Low response rates
Across the industry, resident survey response rates vary between 30%-10%. That means the overwhelming majority of your residents aren’t weighing in.
And the ones that do often represent the extremes.
You might hear from a handful of residents who are unhappy, and a few who are thrilled. The extremes are easy to spot, and in most cases, it’s not hard to predict their behavior when it comes time to renew their lease. But the majority—the “silent middle”—remains the biggest question mark in your retention strategy.
“It’s really easy for our teams to get bogged down by the loudest voices in the room,” said Sarah Allwardt, Director of Marketing and Resident Experience at Kane Residential at a Forum panel. “We all know that one resident who comes in every day complaining about the same thing. We heard from maybe 10% of residents who were really unhappy with us, 10% who loved us, and then that middle 80%—the silent middle—we never heard from.”
Without that full picture, teams are left to make decisions based on limited, skewed data—a phenomenon known as nonresponse bias. When you’re only listening to the loudest few, you risk over-correcting in the wrong places or ignoring systemic issues entirely.
Poor user experience + survey fatigue
Have you noticed how nearly every interaction we have in 2025 comes with a request for feedback?
- How was your self-checkout experience?
- Want to add a tip?
- Enjoying this app?
- Leave a review on our Google Business Profile!
It’s relentless. And if you’re like most people, you probably hit the little X and move on. But when your residents start doing the same, you’ve got a problem.
Even if a resident opens the survey request, getting them to finish it is another story. Whether it’s being redirected to a new browser window, facing too many questions, or dealing with outdated forms, the experience can create enough friction that they’ll abandon it halfway through.
On the operator side, the experience isn’t much better. Survey tools can live in a separate dashboard, or may not integrate with your CRM, which could leave teams juggling disconnected data—or worse—feedback that doesn’t turn into action.
If a resident takes time to complete a survey and sees no visible changes, they’re less likely to respond the next time around. Over time, this leads to survey fatigue and declining participation rates.
Limited visibility
Most multifamily surveys are timed around key points in the renter journey: move-in, renewal, service interactions, etc.
This cadence might work for one-off touchpoints, but it fails to capture ongoing trends that might go unnoticed until it’s too late. Without daily or real-time sentiment tracking, you’re left with a few scattered data points to guide your entire resident retention strategy.
Leverage data you’re already getting: resident calls
Surveys alone are not a modern resident retention strategy. They offer a narrow, episodic view into the resident experience—when what teams really need is continuous, comprehensive Insights.
So how do you fill in the gaps left by resident surveys without bombarding your residents with more of them?
By using the data you’re already getting.
Residents may ignore a survey request, but they won’t ignore a maintenance issue, a billing error, or a lease question. When something matters to them, they’ll call. And those calls hold a goldmine of resident sentiment data ready to be untapped.
Insights AI call scoring automatically analyzes every inbound resident call, capturing the real questions, concerns, and trends happening within your communities.
In July 2025 alone, Insights analyzed thousands of resident calls, revealing the top five reasons residents contacted their leasing teams:
- Resident services (18%)
- Lease inquiry (17%)
- Billing inquiry (17%)
- Existing work order (14%)
- New work order (11%)
Diving deeper, Insights tracked over 780 unique subcategories of resident inquiries, like payment issues, lease term clarifications, renewal questions, charge disputes, move-in assistance, and more. These are the day-to-day realities of resident life—exactly the things that shape satisfaction and impact renewal decisions, yet rarely make it into quarterly surveys.
As Insights collects this data in real time, leasing teams can determine if they are one-off complaints or recurring issues that need to be addressed. Plus, with individual call summaries and automated follow-up tasks, leasing teams get immediate, actionable next steps so nothing falls through the cracks.
By tracking resident conversations 365 days a year, Insights gives you a complete, real-time picture of the resident experience, instead of making strategic decisions based on a handful of survey responses.
Take the Insights product tour to discover how AI-powered resident sentiment analysis turns everyday calls into clear, actionable steps that boost retention:
And once you have that clear picture, the next step is using it to remove the roadblocks that frustrate residents and erode retention.
Retention starts with removing friction
The goal should be to create an experience so smooth that residents can’t imagine leaving.
“Our industry loves to pile on perks, but they won’t be the reason a resident renews if their baseline needs aren’t met…or if getting access to the benefit takes 50 clicks,” said Jessica Beck, Alfred co-founder and CEO, who acquired RKW Residential and later integrated Quarterra Living into the platform in their June merger.
That merger puts her at the helm of approximately 52,000 resident experiences and over $20 billion in assets. To put it plainly—Beck knows what it takes to manage a renter and resident experience at scale. Additionally, as both an operator leading RKW and Quarterra—long-time Funnel partners—and CEO of Alfred, she offers a rare perspective that combines hands-on operational expertise with a technology leader’s drive to push innovation in multifamily.
“Residents stay because living in your building makes their life easier,” Beck said in a recent Linkedin post. “One long-time resident told us, ‘I renewed because I never have to think about issues in my apartment. Everything just works, even when stuff breaks.’ That’s worth more than any amenity package you could build. In resident retention, I now believe that less is more.”
Before adding another perk, Beck suggests asking:
- Will this make life simpler for residents?
- Will it reduce steps or eliminate a pain point?
- Could we get a bigger retention lift by fixing friction instead?
Reduce friction along the entire renter journey
If you want a resident to engage—whether it’s filling out a survey, renewing a lease, or paying a bill—you have to make it as easy as possible. To today’s renter, easy means intuitive, fast, and accessible from anywhere.
“Renters’ expectations are sky-high,” said Joanna Zabriskie, president and CEO at BH told GlobeSt. In 2023. “They insist on having a trouble-free shopping experience – that means an ‘Amazon-easy’ route from their first search to a lease renewal. So, from that perspective, centralization means putting our resident experience at the center of our focus. And Funnel is the tech that lets us do that.”
At Funnel we are proud to partner with companies like Alfred and BH because we share the same goal: Reduce friction at every step of the renter journey. Leaders like Beck and Zabriskie have long championed the idea that the resident experience should be intuitive, fast, and hassle-free. Together, we are delivering easy-to-use tools that meet renters where they are, and reduce administrative bottlenecks that slow teams down.
When we look at the top reasons residents are calling, it’s clear that many of them are about routine, repeatable processes—things that could be handled more efficiently if residents had easier ways to self-serve.
The impact of these calls on your leasing team adds up fast. In July, the heart of peak leasing season, each call averaged around 2 minutes and 10 seconds—translating into hundreds of staff hours spent on these top resident needs:
- 31% of calls about work orders + service requests (~792 hours)
- 17% of calls about payments + billing (~427 hours)
- 13.3% calls about lease inquiry + modifications (~342 hours)
- 7.5% of calls about move-ins/outs (~193 hours)
- 7.5% calls about renewals (~191 hours)
The good news? These are all areas where the right digital tools can reduce friction for residents and free up your team.
“[We wanted to] create an experience that allows the agent to be more hands off, but hands-on when needed and then allows the resident to essentially self-serve as much as possible,” said Jack Banask, Senior Director, Strategy + Operations at Funnel. “We talk a lot about an Amazon experience where when you go to return an order, you don’t want to have to hop on a phone call with an agent and Amazon. You wanna go hit the URL that says return my order and self-serve that all completely.”
Through Funnel’s Resident Portal which is used by teams (and the corresponding renter-facing app, Nestio), move-in tasks like utility setup, parking registration, and pet documentation can be completed digitally. Payments and renewals can be handled securely in-app from anywhere—no need for a call or an office visit. Lease modifications, like adding a roommate or changing units, can be completed start-to-finish through DIY workflows in Online Leasing. And with our SuiteSpot integration, service requests are submitted, tracked, and resolved entirely within the resident portal and Nestio app, giving residents more visibility and faster turnaround times.
Insights works whether or not you use the Funnel CRM or platform. While pairing it with the rest of the suite unlocks even more efficiency, you can start analyzing resident sentiment from calls right away, no platform migration required.
By making these everyday interactions effortless, you not only reduce call volume—you create a resident experience that feels seamless from day one to renewal.
Learn more about Funnel’s frictionless approach to the renter and resident experience with Jack Banask Inside the Funnel:
Your residents are talking. How well are you listening?
Funnel’s Insights fills in the blind spots left by traditional resident surveys, giving you continuous, portfolio-wide visibility into what your residents really care about—without adding friction. And because Insights can integrate with your existing systems, you don’t need the Funnel CRM or platform to use it.
Paired with our renter-centric® suite of solutions, you can turn those insights into action: solving recurring issues, streamlining daily interactions, and delivering the seamless, connected experience residents expect.
When every tool in your tech stack works together you get unmatched clarity across the entire renter journey. And that clarity drives retention.
