Thanks to new marketing tactics, lead generation has increased—a lot. Qualified leads are flooding in like a broken assembly line. The conveyor belt is whirling and spitting out qualified leads too quickly for anyone to work on. Key pieces are falling off of the end and building into a mound more reflective of Mount Everest than a realistic leasing agent's workload. What's the point of getting more qualified leads if you can't nurture them? We have to be honest. Getting an additional hundred qualified leads a week doesn't add value unless you equip your leasing teams to take on the extra workload. So instead of expecting the limited human bandwidth of a leasing agent to expand magically, what if we provided tools that capitalized on the upsurge in lead generation? Ah, yes, the virtual receptionist.
The Difference Between a Virtual Assistant and a Virtual Receptionist
First things first, a virtual assistant is not the same as a virtual receptionist. While they may sound similar, they do differ. A virtual assistant is a broad and vague tool designed to complete various tasks, often swivel-chairing items into an organized to-do list for an actual employee to address later on. On the other hand, a virtual receptionist plays a clear role at the top of the sales funnel and will tackle or delegate tasks accordingly. Every action of a virtual receptionist is clear, organized, and structured to push a lead further down the sales funnel.
Key Benefits of Virtual Receptionists
Residents Can Call After Hours (24/7 Availability)
Why do we prefer virtual receptionists over assistants? First, they aren't dependent on a human to say "Hey Siri" to activate them for every single use case, which means once a virtual receptionist starts their shift, they are on 24/7/365. Your leasing agent doesn't need to say "Hey Siri" whenever a prospect calls at 2:00 a.m. to ask about your unit pricing and availability, and even better, a virtual receptionist is always eager to answer a prospect's late-night question because they don't clock out after hours.
Scale Customer Support
There are only two ways to attain top-notch customer service for a high volume of leads. Option one, hire an army of people to meet the demand; option two, hire one stellar virtual receptionist who can simultaneously interact with hundreds of clients. Did you roll out a new policy and are overwhelmed about how to train your entire customer support army? Chill out because you only have to train your one virtual receptionist. Customer support plans can be refined, expanded, or dialed back immediately and executed flawlessly.
Decrease Labor Costs
Hiring and training a giant 24/7/365 customer support team takes a lot of resources. However, purchasing a virtual receptionist subscription takes much less. Setting up an AI-powered chatbot like Quext Digital Human on your community website only takes minutes. It seamlessly integrates with your PMS and CRM for a frictionless onboarding process. Quext Digital Human takes less time and less money while delivering more results. The future of customer support is here, and if a virtual receptionist is wrong, we don't want to be right.
Steps to Implement an Automated Answering Service
How does one execute hiring the perfect virtual receptionist? Well, you can't give a job interview to a virtually generated human (at least not yet). Still, you can investigate product offerings by determining whether the virtual receptionist product has the key ingredients you need for success, such as reputation, automation capabilities, and customization.
Find a Reputable Virtual Front Desk Software Company
Customer support drives reputation. Every apartment community is after the elusive 5-star review on Google. Therefore, it's essential to consider whether this is the technology you want to be the face of your company, the first interaction a prospective client has. In other words, the quality of a customer success tool will directly mold the reputation of the company it's serving. You're investing in virtual front desk software, so be picky!
Make Sure the Virtual Receptionist System Has the Right Automation Capabilities
An AI receptionist sustains customer support through powerful automation. Automations to look for include an automated answering service, call-routing during regular business hours, and a strategy for after-business hours. Integrations with your PMS and CRM systems are a must. You must feed your virtual receptionist with accurate pricing, availability, pet policies, and amenities while pulling leads from the virtual receptionist into your CRM as nurtured and qualified leads.
Customize Your Digital Human
Finally, customization is the secret ingredient to making a virtual receptionist valuable to any sales initiative. An after-hours virtual receptionist is only adequate to the degree in which it is tailored to answer unique questions about your community's features and policies. Answering a high call volume is only practical if you have the power to determine what the service will do to propel those calls down the pipeline effectively. Ultimately, the human configuring the virtual receptionist behind the scenes shapes your brand and customers' user experience.
