Avanti Ups Its Game Using Smart Solutions

The Challenge: Finding a reliable communication and service platform

When Avanti Residential began to bring the management of its properties in-house in the spring of 2019, the company’s leadership team knew selecting the right platform for on-site teams to communicate with residents and manage service requests would make or break the transition.

To set up its staff for success and take customer service to the next level, it was paramount that the new management platform and all its accompanying technology be in place on Day One of the transition.

The Solution: SmartRent replaces maintenance and answering service systems

Brenda Gammie, Senior Vice President of Operations for Avanti, said the company’s vetting process quickly steered it toward SmartRent; one of Avanti’s previous third-party management companies had used a SmartRent solution, and the feedback was overwhelmingly positive.

“The easy decision for us would have been to just go with our property-management system’s mobile maintenance,” Gammie said, “but we wanted to go with the technology leader and the best in class, which was SmartRent.”

The fact that SmartRent’s top-shelf Work Management solution didn’t come with a painful sticker price made Avanti’s decision even easier.

A seamless technology transition

SmartRent’s features, flexibility and user friendliness immediately won over Gammie and Avanti’s on-site teams.

"When I did the demo, all the features that SmartRent has were really appealing,” Gammie said. “I just remember being so excited to roll it out, even knowing that we would probably have some hiccups and maybe not everyone would embrace it."

Normally, with a significant technology transition, there is pushback from the site teams, Gammie said. But Avanti didn’t experience any “hiccups” when it made the switch to SmartRent solutions.

In fact, Avanti’s maintenance supervisors are among the biggest advocates for SmartRent, praising its user-friendly interface, its documentation capabilities and its photo features.

Gammie said the platform’s ability to quickly adapt to Avanti’s changing needs helped the company navigate unprecedented waters brought by the COVID-19 pandemic. Avanti’s team used Work Management as a primary means of communication during the pandemic, and they continue to do so today.

Well-received by staff

Avanti brought management in-house at 25% of its properties in April of 2019., By mid-summer of the same year it had assumed management of the remaining 75%, with SmartRent solutions implemented portfolio-wide.

"We really like SmartRent because it’s easy to use and understand on the maintenance side—it has definitely made my job easier," said David Mariotti, the maintenance supervisor at Avanti’s Flats at Pinecliff.

Jose Alvarez, the maintenance supervisor at Omnia McClintock in Tempe, Ariz., said the SmartRent platform has organized his workload and allowed his team to diagnose maintenance issues before a technician ever sets foot inside an apartment.

"SmartRent is easy to use and keeps track of service requests,” he said. “I love that residents can take a picture of the problem and upload it to the conversation. That helps us to troubleshoot in advance. It has truly made a difference in my day-to-day operations.”

The Result: Increased accountability boosts productivity

The first indicator that SmartRent’s Work Management solution was paying dividends for Avanti showed up in the form of staff accountability. The transparency and documentation afforded by the system allowed associate performance to be tracked and evaluated on an entirely new level.

SmartRent built custom reports for Avanti to track efficiency items like turnaround times for work orders and apartment turns.

“It’s very important to us to track performance internally,” Gammie said. “When you’re tracking it and teams are being held accountable, it’s always going to be a different level of performance—the highest level of performance.”

But have those custom tracking reports increased productivity and efficiency? Avanti’s key performance indicators (KPI) for service say yes.

Avanti had a KPI score of 2.09% in October 2019, one year after rolling out SmartRent across its portfolio. Within six months, those same KPIs improved to 4.65%—an increase of 122%.

What SmartRent’s Work Management and Answer Automation do for Avanti

Work Management and Answer Automation make the Avanti team’s job easier by offering the following:

SmartRent Work Management:

• Easy-to-use workflow platform, available on both iOS and Android for mobile and tablet devices.
• Elimination of duplicated efforts through the use of flexible virtual workspaces.
• Improved efficiencies, resulting in better customer service, increased revenue-collections rates, and reduced payment delinquencies.
• Advanced reporting using filters and easily exportable data into third-party tools for deeper analysis.

SmartRent Answer Automation:

• Call masking guarantees that residents see the community number—rather than a team member’s number—on incoming calls, helping ensure that they pick up.
• Professional greetings to welcome callers with professionally recorded prompts, custom multilingual announcements and on-hold marketing.
• 24/7 phone answering to provide service, no matter the hour, with an interactive caller experience that can include office hours, directions, urgent maintenance, service requests, etc.
• Efficient call routing to the right team member, with up to 10 levels of escalation.
• Seamless integration with all major property-management systems to immediately recognize residents via CallerID and deliver a personalized experience.

The Avanti team’s favorite product features: Multi-photo, reporting

Expectations exceeded

SmartRent’s role in Avanti’s management launch proved instrumental to its success, according to Gammie.

“The customer service, their response times, the custom items that they had to build out—whether it’s because we’re a startup or if it’s been COVID-19 related—has completely exceeded our expectations,” Gammie said.

“We transitioned 27 properties in 90 days, and things were a little chaotic on our end,” Gammie explained. “We weren’t always 100% organized, but SmartRent did a great job of working with us and even supporting us in ways that are really outside of what SmartRent does. Their whole team has been a bigger part of our startup and our launch than just being a vendor providing a product for us.”