NextView Property: How “Alex” saved property managers’ energy during the pandemic

NextView Property is a real estate agency specialising in residential and commercial property, offering office, consulting and other properties for sale and lease. 

Customers rely on NextView Property for their professionalism, responsiveness and personalised attention. They have provided customers with engaged, area-intelligent and positive service for decades, which is why they sought a solution as dedicated as they are.

Their customers also rely on them to provide professional advice and top-notch service for tenants and investors, so adopting proptech was the next step they knew became necessary as their operations continue to evolve. 

Proptech refers to using technology to improve the way people sell, buy, rent, construct, design and manage their properties, and NextView was quick to find a solution their property management could use as a complement to their excellent quality of service.

NextView’s challenge in keeping up with the industry’s tech-forward shift

Having been in the real estate business for more than a decade, NextView Director Alex Madikian is well aware of the usual challenges that come with leasing and managing properties. Attending to tenant concerns, increasing the rent roll and staying on top of the responsibilities per property can be taxing on even the most experienced manager.

As a result, in recent years the industry has undergone several changes, and one key shift has been in the adoption of technology to improve the efficiency of operations. The property industry has gradually taken on more solutions:

• 61% have adopted at least one tech solution,

• 48% of tools adopted are management systems, and

• 53% recognise they don’t have the required talent for adopting multiple products

There are more organisations that have a tech solution in place than ones that don’t, and the trend shows that it’s only a matter of time until these late adopters bring it into their practice.

For NextView Property Director Alex Madikian, it was clear where the organisation was headed. “In our years in the industry we’ve established ourselves as a key provider in this area,” Alex shared, “but we knew we had to keep up with how the industry has grown and bring tech into the way we work.”

Rental Heroes provided support during the pandemic

When the pandemic hit and forced the acceleration of tech adoption in their ways of working, NextView looked for solutions and found Rental Heroes at the right time. 

COVID-19 played a big role in their search for a tech solution to integrate into their operations, as with many organisations in the real estate industry. A recent Property Council survey shows that real estate agencies have made significant strides in adopting technology:

• 28% of respondents are funnelling investment in technology as a result of the pandemic, and

• 55% of respondents beefed up investments in existing technology

The move was a natural progression for NextView Director Alex Madikian: “We were just thinking about how we could involve more tech in the business, and we got a call from Rental Heroes where they explained their offer. It resonated with us for a couple of reasons, so when we heard even more about their product during a conference, we signed up there and then.”

The solution became even more relevant considering the timing; NextView encountered Rental Heroes when many of their team members had just joined the team, so they saw this as an opportunity both to make tech a part of their ways of working and a business practice that the mostly-new team could rely on as they updated their operations.

Property management comes with its own hard technical skill requirements and its soft capacity-building skill needs, so professionals who need more experience are also growing and learning along the way. Given that not all tenants understand what goes into property management, some may be frustrated by one who hasn’t encountered their concern before.

These kinds of situations are where proptech, particularly Rental Heroes’ “Alex,” shines. NextView Property has the knowledge and expertise of more than a decade of experience in the industry but happened to bring in several new employees when the pandemic had just hit. While these new recruits are knowledgeable and dedicated, they simply hadn’t seen it all yet.

Rental Heroes’ “Alex” is equipped to address situations that even the most recently-appointed property manager may be at a loss to handle. The most common concerns that tenants direct to their property managers are related to troubleshooting repairs in the space and the specific challenges are easily handled with Rental Heroes’ “Alex” directions.

How Rental Heroes’ “Alex” has empowered NextView tenants

Rental Heroes’ “Alex” does much to save property managers’ time because they can attend to higher-value activities, especially if tenants’ main concerns are mostly troubleshooting. The way “Alex” works also motivates renters to be proactive tenants and shows them how dealing with the challenges of occupying property can be rewarding.

Assigning a property manager to handle tenant troubleshooting concerns can be manageable in a short period, but in the long run, it can take valuable time and resources away from tasks directly affecting other aspects of the property, such as its profitability and total condition. 

Aside from that, managers could need more information from tenants to be able to address their concerns properly, which tenants may not always be able to express in full detail. 

This could lead to more problems, and dissatisfaction with the property manager and create a negative impression of the property as a whole–which tenants could publicly complain about online.

This can be avoided if tenant concerns are addressed more efficiently–if they get the exact answers they need with the details they provided–and self-service can be the way to do this.

Self-service in property management functions like a virtual front desk of a property manager's office. This gives tenants a venue to submit photos and explain their problem without a NextView representative having to walk them through a checklist, and provides major support.

Tenants can get information and support about their current or prospective property with  self-service, and need little assistance from human property managers to be answered. A fully equipped self-service tool utilises intelligent chatbots which supply detailed responses to commonly asked questions in a conversational, easy-to-understand manner.

A self-service experience enables tenants to receive the insight they need without waiting for a property manager to take their call and frees them from the constraints of office operating hours by providing them with access to information no matter the time they may need it. 

Without a self-service tool, property managers are bound to be inundated by requests, their workflow constantly interrupted by much of the same concerns. Property managers without this digital aid are also spending a lot of time on data input often repeated on multiple platforms, and before they know it they’re lacking time for valuable high-level tasks.

With the composition of the NextView team only just getting established at the time of adoption, Rental Heroes’ solution responded to concerns even on the rare occasions that they were unfamiliar with the problem. This was a game changer, especially for tenants who were confused about liability for certain repairs, as Rental Heroes’ “Alex” could answer right away.

Rental Heroes’ “Alex” gives tenants the opportunity to solve problems by themselves, or with minimal assistance from its natural language chatbot, and NextView’s tenants have since taken matters into their own hands to deal with challenges and feel ownership over solutions.

Even the most convoluted problem can be solved with the right combination of proptech and capable property managers. Are you ready to weather even the toughest property challenge with your team? Book a demo with us today and we can give you the right tools to give your property managers more time and boost tenants’ problem-solving confidence.