Geekly Media is dedicated to property management process automation and marketing automation for property managers. It is what we do because we believe in the powerful change that can be brought to your business by harnessing the power of automation.
However, not everything can be automated, and not everything should be automated. There are some things—like a personal touch—that automation can't replace.
We think if you focus on these five things that can be automated in 2024, you'll be prepared for a prosperous 2025 and beyond.
Here are the top five things you should automate before 2025!
1. Employee Training
Employee training is an investment in your property management business. When employees are properly trained, they make fewer costly mistakes, are more efficient, and are also happier. Happy employees work harder—and take better care of your business because they know you take care of them too.
Training every employee as a business grows can be costly in terms of the time you pay your employee while they train and also the person training them. What is the solution? Automation! How? By making your process documentation efforts easily accessible.
If you've taken the time to document your processes, you already have a training knowledge base—you just need to host and present it in a way that your employees can use more easily than asking (and interrupting) a coworker.
Using a knowledge base program that is accessible via a robust chatbot will allow you to upload all of your training documents into a one-stop, easily-searched shop so that your employees always have the right process available with video, screenshots, written instructions, and more.
2. Customer Service
Take customer service to the next level using the same knowledge base program and chatbot, allowing customers to self-manage their questions and submit tickets without ever needing to talk to a member of your team. They'll be happy they have the answers they need at their fingertips, and your team's productivity won't suffer over simple, easily-solved requests.
You can even take your already great customer service to the next level by using property management process automation to send thank you cards or other small gestures that make a big impact. This can even be done using integrations that already exist for your automation platform. Think of it: sending a gift card to a client with a thank you note after the first year of working with you is a small gesture that will leave a client feeling appreciated and happy to work with you, ushering in the next happy year.
3. Marketing
Your sales team is not going to close every lead that comes in; some people just aren't ready. That doesn't mean they won't be later on, and letting those leads go is lost business for sure. When a lead isn't ready, have your sales team find out why, then put them into a workflow that will check in when the time is right, nurture the lead, and possibly bring them back to you down the road.
Have an owner that is going to self manage? Put them in a drip meant for DIY landlords. Be the helpful expert they look to, and eventually, they might trust you to just take over. Are they going with a different company? Great, set your marketing automation to check in 6 months later and again in a year for satisfaction. Decided to sell? If that property is still on the market in a couple of months, they might reconsider. By using marketing automation, all these leads might eventually call you. You already have the leads; make the most of them.
4. Operations
Take the repetitive tasks out of late rent collections, lease preparation, renewals, and more! By freeing up the time your team spends on repetitive tasks with property management process automation, you open the door for them to provide better service when it counts. This ends up improving your reputation. Your employees will be able to manage more as well, so you can grow your company without growing your staff.
The automation of simple tasks can save a lot of time. Templated emails for commonly asked questions that can be sent right from your inbox or tasks that get assigned the moment a trigger happens, such as a contract is signed. When added up, hours are saved per day, per employee.
5. Reporting
When you automate your property management operations and marketing, you get automatic reporting as well. The same system that can automate your rent collections workflows can also pull that data into reports that give you a bird's eye view of your company's operations. By managing the process and not the people, you get to scale your time as well and spend more time on the things that inspired you to start a business in the first place.
Automation is so common in 2024; you've probably benefitted from the efficiency of automation when interacting with businesses and have not even known it because of how smoothly the process works. If you'd like to learn how automation can improve your bottom line, let us know! We can give you a free automation analysis to let you know just how much time and money you can save or not save if automation isn't a good fit. Get your free automation analysis here!
3 min read
