How JLL housing managers reduce routine maintenance tasks by 60% using AI

Natalie Smithson
AI enthusiast | Tea addict | Focused on using AI assistants to win the working week
AI assistant supporting residents for JLL property developers

CASE STUDY
JLL | Property developers

Key challenges

Director of Build-to-Rent Management, Sam Winnard, wanted to make it faster and easier for JLL residents to report maintenance issues and get them fixed.

  • Housing managers spent their time going back and forth over the phone and email to report maintenance issues for residents
  • They’d go between the maintenance company and the resident to confirm visitation dates
  • This cumbersome process caused anxiety for residents and staff alike

Key results

Sam booked a call with us to find out how launching an AI assistant could help and estimated AI would handle 25% of maintenance issues. In the first month, JLL far exceeded the target with 60% of issues being automatically resolved using AI.

  • Customers now get an instant repair date for maintenance issues
  • They speak with the AI assistant through a JLL property app they’re already familiar with, so the switch was easy
  • Housing managers are now free to focus their time on upgrading or enhancing living experiences for tenants
Image of AI assistant avatar (red JLL logo) with a speech bubble that says
”Managing an apartment block of 24 storeys””Resident support is given 24 hours a day””AI support keenly used by 60% of residents”

Notable breakthroughs along the way

  • Residents prefer speaking with the AI assistant to calling or emailing the maintenance team
  • AI helps the property developers uncover patterns in resident behaviour that transforms their insight, so they can improve the customer experience
  • The JLL support team benefits just as much as residents do from the use of AI

It takes just 10 minutes to launch an AI assistant

A few years ago, it would have been a long-winded, expensive and highly technical process for JLL to launch an AI assistant. Our unique platform takes all that pain away:

All you need to get started is your website url ― it’s that simple!

Screen on EBI.AI AI Studio platform where you are asked to enter the URL for your website to automatically create an AI assistant using its content

Changing the way people experience life at home

Before launching their AI assistant, Sam knew technology was starting to change the way people experience life at home and had big ambitions for the use of AI.

On our advanced platform, they have full control over every response their AI assistant sends out to their valuable customers, which can be edited any time.

Everything the JLL property team needs to check the AI assistant’s progress is on their client dashboard:

EBI.AI client dashboard showing AI assistant conversation trends and data - property queries
(Data shown is for illustrative purposes only)

A smarter way to manage tenancies

JLL’s One Eighty Stratford is a modern 24-storey apartment building in East London, but the high-end products they use can still break and goods still stop working even if they’re brand new. There had to be a smarter way to take details of a fault and confirm when it could be fixed.

Using AI to handle maintenance calls, JLL knew they could:

  • Reduce anxiety for the customer by giving instant repair dates
  • Spare significant cost for JLL in not having to hire people to handle unnecessarily manual processes
  • Free up property managers to upgrade and enhance living experiences for residents
Resident sitting relaxed in an armchair with tea and a housing manager arranging flowers at a desk with the words

The new AI-driven process is a hit with residents

As digital pioneers, JLL already has an app it uses to connect with customers at One Eighty Stratford, so we connected their new AI assistant to that through a simple integration. Customers happily use the technology they’re familiar with to access new conversational services powered by AI, but even JLL was surprised to reveal the true demand for proptech solutions in people’s everyday lives.

In the first month, JLL more than doubled their target of having 25% of residents using the AI assistant to report maintenance issues.

60% of people at the One Eighty Stratford JLL site starting using the AI assistant straight away to contact the maintenance team.

Small bullseye showing 25% target and large bullseye showing 60% result

Showcasing what the future of renting looks like

JLL has a dedicated technologies group working on finding exciting new ways to create build-to-rent spaces that look good, but also function well. Things will always need fixing along the way; it’s how they deal with those issues that makes people choose their apartment over the one next door, and stay living there.

At One Eighty Stratford, residents can speak with the AI assistant to get instant answers to their problems or contact their property manager. If there’s no immediate fix, they can access the diary system used by the maintenance team, so they can both report the problem and schedule the repair in minutes.

The JLL AI assistant helps a resident with a boiler problem. The AI assistant asks the resident:

The AI assistant pulls the community together

Without having to switch technology providers or change their current management system, JLL started using an AI assistant to give their property managers more time to focus on what’s important for their residents.

With 60% of people preferring to chat with the AI assistant rather than pick up the phone or send an email to report a problem, it shows the 180 Stratford community is comfortable with new technology.

It’s another first-class feature from JLL that gives their residents a better experience, making them less likely to move on.

Image of a comfortable living area with JLL logo

Launch an AI assistant today (or ask us to do it)

It’s easy to use our AI Studio to create and manage your own AI assistant, or you can choose our managed service and ask us to do it all for you. AI assistants are now used across all sorts of industries to transform customer service, and every organisation is different.

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Get an AI assistant working around the clock to instantly resolve property queries:

  • Automate up to 90% of routine enquiries*
  • Reduce your average cost per enquiry from £5 to 5p*
  • Increase customer satisfaction by 67%*
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*all results we’ve delivered for our clients

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