Technology and Your Facility

In today’s fast paced world, it is imperative to keep up with technology that keeps you engaged with potential and current tenants at all times.  With constant lead follow-ups, collection calls and walk-in traffic, it’s sometimes hard for property managers to find time for their daily walkthrough’s as well as bank visits and other daily procedures that need to get done.  Thankfully, there is technology available which allows your managers to effectively complete their daily duties.   Websites and smart phone apps are now integrated with management systems to provide tenants the ability to rent spaces and pay their rent after business hours.  Many self storage facilities utilize kiosks at their facilities which allow for various forms of payment as well as unit rentals at all hours of the day and night. Some facilities also have now have ability to complete a rental online. This is helpful as most of our customers are in the middle of moving, which can be a very stressful time.  Giving them the flexibility to control when they interact with a facility while again helping to relieve the stress our customers are under is an important amenity when you are looking to differentiate your facility from competition.   Call centers like Open Tech Alliance are also an integral part of keeping constant contact with tenants.  When your office is closed or managers are busy with customers call centers interact with them as if they are on-site management.  With the ability to connect to a web-based management system, they have the ability to take reservations or tenant payments in real time.  They are also a great communication tool for tenants regarding emergency closings and for reconciliation of those after hours forgotten gate codes.  This tool insures that phone calls received will be answered by a live person instead of an impersonal voicemail.   Depending on the size of your facility, collections can be a very time consuming task for managers.  There are now programs like Call Potential that work with your management software to help you manage your collections and ultimately save time.  They have the ability to send out texts, automated calls and e-mails to past due tenants on a daily basis.  Management also has the ability to set their own parameters regarding when these notifications are processed and what types of messages are delivered.  Ultimately, these technological tools will help free up time for your managers to multi-task more effectively.