DEEP DIVE What We Learned Calling 5,081 Apartment Communities

What We've Done

Since 2021, we've called 5,081 apartment communities individually. From a target PMC perspective, this data set comprises a broad cross section of PMCs. Included are an NMHC Top 10 firm, multiple top NMHC top 50 firms, mid-sized PMCs, and PMCs with less than 20 communities. Additionally, the communities we called included conventional, affordable, and student housing sites. Importantly, we put in our test calls outside of property business hours -- it is entirely possible findings would differ if sites were called during business hours.

What we found surprised us.

What We Measure

Above else, we're trying to measure call behavior. Specifically, if a prospect or resident were to call an apartment community after hours, then what happens? Does the call route somewhere expected, and, on the face of it, does it look possible for a caller to leave a message? The key areas we measure when determining the effectiveness of current call behavior are:

• Critical Failures: We say a property has a critical failure any time a caller is wholly unable to leave a message or interact with the property. Examples include calls which route to a number which has been disconnected, calls which route to an unrelated personal cell phone, a voicemail which is full, and calls which ring for 60 seconds or more without forwarding to a missed call handling solution (VM, answering service, call center, etc.).
• Takes too long to forward: We say a call takes too long to forward if it rings the property for 30 seconds or more without forwarding to a missed call handling solution (VM, answering service, call center, etc.). From a best practices perspective, we recommend a community forward missed calls to their missed call handling solution after 15 seconds (or 3 rings). Any longer than that, and we believe calling prospects and residents hang up without realizing calls will be handled (eventually) if they just stay on the line.
• Poor audio quality on intro: We see this primarily with properties that still use a voicemail (in lieu of something more sophisticated like an answering service or call center), but we flag a property as having this problem if the audio quality for the introduction for the VM or answering service is materially poor. The arbitrary standard our team tried to use here was: "Would my old VP Marketing be mad at me if she heard this voicemail intro for one of our sites?"
• Unbranded / Misbranded Intro: We flagged a property as having this problem if the missed call handling solution greeting included the wrong property name or if it didn't include the property name at all.
• No Exceptions: For any properties which had none of the issues above, we said they had no exceptions.

Additionally, from a service provider perspective, we tried to identify what kind of solution each community used to manage missed calls. Specifically, we tracked if missed calls went to a voicemail or if they went to any other kind of provider (answering service software, call center, 24x7 concierge, etc.).

The Good

When we called those 5,081 communities, 57.7% (2,933) sounded reasonable to us. They were well branded, audio was clear, calls forwarded to some kind of solution for managing missed calls, and that missed call forwarding happened within a reasonable amount of time.

The Bad

Of the sites we called:

• 7.95% of calls were delayed before being forwarded to their missed call handling solution. We believe that, for these sites, calling prospects and residents are likely to hang up before realizing missed calls will go somewhere eventually.
• 11.38% had extremely poor audio quality on the audio intro present on their missed call handling solution. These sites often utilized voicemail as their missed call handling solution, but we also saw this issue with answering services and call centers on occasion.
• 14.33% of sites had a missed call handling solution audio intro that was unbranded or misbranded. It's not a good look when a site's voicemail intro still lists the management firm from 5 years prior!

The Ugly

Of all of the sites we called, an astounding 10.41% were completely inoperable. The property phone number had been disconnected, calls never forwarded anywhere once missed, a voicemail was full, or some other issue blocked a calling prospect or resident from leaving a message. This percentage is scary -- this group represents the sites where you could have a major water leak at 8PM on a Saturday night, and site staff are unlikely to know before 9AM Monday morning.

Services Used by PMCs

Property management companies use a variety of solutions to manage missed calls. Of the sites we called, 39.59% used voicemail to manage missed calls, while the remainder used an answering service or call center to manage missed calls.

Summary of Findings

Managing missed call handling solutions across a portfolio of properties is tough. There are potentially numerous underlying property phone providers in play, and a PMC may have a collection of vendors that are used to manage missed calls at scale. However, this complexity has led to a problem: many PMCs do not have solutions in place to consistently manage missed calls at scale. As a result, a percentage of calls from prospects and residents are going nowhere at all.

How Courtesy Connection Can Help

Courtesy Connection provides answering service software for the property management industry. While Courtesy Connection provides substantial tooling to manage configuration of missed call handling solutions at scale, Courtesy Connection also proactively tests after-hours call flow for clients to attempt to ensure that call flow to the answering service works consistently -- both at the time of implementation and for years afterward.

Want to chat with our team to learn more?  Fill out the form below, and we'll be in touch.