We recently got a chance to chat with Daryl E. Smith, chief marketing officer at our strategic partner KETTLER, about the current state of renewals in multifamily and the benefits of optimizing this process. Many thanks to Daryl for his time and insight!

Generally speaking, how is the apartment industry lacking in its approach to renewals and resident retention?

Smith: The industry has a tremendous opportunity to re-imagine the renewal experience with the objective of creating frictionless experiences, while increasing the transparency of the revenue cycle. With that in mind, we have an opportunity to engage digital solutions that decrease competitive priorities for our on-site teams, while delivering the renewal process in a faster, more efficient manner for our customers. This will also help improve our view of the customer re-acquisition process and develop a model that maximizes the lifetime value of our customers.

What are the consequences of this lack of focus on renewals?

Smith: Not focusing on the renewal segment of the customer journey creates a barrier to the full end-to-end view of the customer lifecycle and thus inhibits our ability to fully model the customer lifetime value. The opportunity to digitize the experience for both our associates and our consumers is integral in keeping compass with consumer engagement and personalization needs. Not maturing one’s operations from a manual dependency will limit the ability to project and predict revenue in a real-time manner and thus slow the competitive pace of understanding opportunities for rent growth.

Describe the business benefits that operators can experience by optimizing their approach to renewals and resident retention.

Smith: There are several business benefits of optimizing renewal operations: 1) the ability to reimagine how you view revenue through enhanced operational models such as “centralization,” 2) developing enhanced abilities to see the full revenue spectrum through the lifetime value of your customer, 3) reduction in re-acquisition costs in maintaining customers within the brand, 4) elimination of competing priorities for staff roles, while creating opportunities to re-engineer job functions and 5) supporting the full view of the customer journey end-to end.

How has Renew impacted KETTLER so far?

Smith: The tool has created excitement and inspiration for our associates by reducing the time formerly required in the execution of the renewal process. Renew transforms manual milestones into a digital process on behalf of our teams, while creating real-time opportunities for our customers to deliver their leasing decisions in a much faster manner. We have seen a sharp increase in fast responses, thus enabling our ability to project and predict revenue. The data behind the operations is extremely robust and provides insights that support intra-disciplinary sync to position our company’s revenue goals and customer experience objectives. Renew has filled the digital gap for the last segment of our customer journey.