Rental managers: How does AI help with property maintenance, exactly?

Property maintenance isn’t ever going away. The beautiful or useful thing you put in a home could break or get broken at any time. Nothing is guaranteed to work or keep working, even if it’s straight out the box. When you’re responsible for making sure a place is well-maintained, you need the most efficient and easiest way to get things fixed, so it’s not dead time.

That’s where conversational AI comes in ― we’ll show you how.

Using our advanced AI platform you can automate conversations with customers living in the property you manage. Rather than go back and forth over the phone or email with you, they can speak with your AI assistant to report a problem and instantly arrange to get it fixed.

We’ve already got a property assistant you can start using today, which answers around 85% of the most common maintenance questions you’re ever likely to get as a property manager, plus there’s a little freedom to add some unique features. If you have a more complex query, that’s fine too. Ask us to build it for you ― it costs a little extra, but with the time you’ll save in the long run we think you’ll agree it’s worth it.

Here’s the best bit.

You won’t have to manage any of this technology, we do all of that for you so you can focus on managing your property. We’ve also been working with software for more than 20 years, so if you’re using a technology service or system to handle some element of property maintenance that you already like ― a calendar or an app, maybe, we can easily link it up with your AI.

Using AI to report a property maintenance issue

Let’s look at exactly how an AI assistant can help you. Say you get a call from one of your residents to tell you the bathroom tap in their apartment is broken.

What do you do?

You speak with them about the details of the fault and ask for photos.
Check the make and model of the tap.
Then you contact your engineers to see when they’re available to visit the apartment.
You go back to the customer, who may be stressed out at this point and taking it out on you.
Or maybe the photos didn’t come through. Or you can’t get hold of anyone so you’re playing telephone ping pong, much to everyone’s annoyance.

Maintenance can sometimes be a thorn in your side, but you persevere because you care about your customer.

Using AI can give them the instant response they long for. Every time. And you don’t need to do a thing.

Check out our AI property assistant in action for our client JLL. You can read the case study here

Your AI assistant can live just about anywhere

You can add a digital assistant to your website, your telephone line, an app, on your social media channels, on a smart speaker in the property you manage, or any other channel you choose.

The most important part is making sure the conversation flows naturally and moves quickly, so everyone knows when the problem will be fixed and can get on with their day. That’s why we have a whole team of conversation designers and conversation analysts who specialise in this very art.

Work out what takes the time, and we’ll free it up for you

Immediately after your customer reports a maintenance problem to your digital assistant, you can move them onto the next step without having to spend any of your time managing the problem ― unless you feel you want or need to.

Using our platform, connect your AI assistant to something like a maintenance calendar so residents can instantly book an engineer to come and fix the problem. If for any reason they can’t do that, your AI can always quickly transfer them over to one of your team. That’s always an option.

You’ll learn more and more from your AI assistant over time

If it’s always the same brand of the washing machine that breaks in the property you manage or the heating system seems to cut out every year in December, you can look back through the huge volumes of data your AI collects over time and spot that trend; save yourself some time.

Shifting to another brand of the appliance might be less hassle, or giving boilers the once over every November could spare a rush of urgent calls from customers suffering in the cold.

For a reasonable monthly fee, we’re always there in the background studying the conversations your AI assistant has with your residents to make sure the answers stay tip-top ― every time. We’ll soon notice if the same things crop up time and time again and where improvements can be made.

Upgrading your systems to AI is fun too : )

Bringing an AI assistant into your business is like hiring a new member of staff, except with technology you can create the exact agent you want.

• Your AI assistant is branded with your logo and colours, so it looks and sounds like everything else you show your customers
• You can give your AI assistant a name
• You can even add gifs or jokes into conversations if it suits your style

AI is always there to help your residents, 24/7, day or night. It’s never late or off sick. AI can’t get things wrong because it will only ever use the most up to date, approved information you have for your residents. All that time you spend right now going back and forth, the time you could be spending on finding that more reliable brand of washing machine or marketing your apartments, can be saved by AI.

Ask us for a demo and we’ll show you what our advanced AI platform can do for you.