To be successful, apartment communities obviously have to provide prospects with great leasing experiences. Here’s the thing, though: A lot of times, consumers don’t know what they want.
Did consumers know they wanted the Google search engine – literally just this blank page with one dialogue box – before it came along? No. Did we know we wanted a one-click way to check out, like Amazon has given us? No.
Capital One has disrupted the banking experience with their open-space Capital One Cafés. However, I doubt they got the idea for this because they got feedback from customers saying, “I’ll feel better if I bank in a café with refreshments and without tellers behind three-quarter-high walls.”
Like these businesses did, apartment operators and their leasing teams need to use their insight, expertise and even the science around buying to design leasing experiences that will please and engage prospects. And they should look to what has been studied and works in other businesses as well.
And yes, definitely, listen to and taken in all prospect feedback.
Still, from my years in the industry, I’ve learned there are some general things prospects want from their leasing experiences, and it’s important for operators to keep these in mind.
Prospects want leasing agents who add value. Prospects really crave leasing agents who truly listen to them and who have the knowledge to answer their questions. Unfortunately, leasing agents don’t always pass this test.
Agents also too often force the flow of conversation. If a prospect starts off by talking about how they want to be on the top floor of the building and the leasing agent says, “First off, when are you looking to move?”, or the leasing agent is completely price-centric and responds with “What’s your price range?”, that’s forcing the flow of the conversation, which can be irritating to a prospect. Prospects want to have authentic, natural conversations with leasing agents.
Prospects want to feel welcomed. Leasing agents have to be welcoming. They need to smile, stand up, say hello and introduce themselves. They should offer refreshments to ensure prospects know the leasing team is excited they are there. Leasing teams are under so much pressure, and sometimes they’ve just been grilled by their regional manager or had a rough owner’s visit when a prospect walks in, so it’s not always easy to smile but it’s so crucial to do so.
And it’s crucial for management to feed their leasing teams with positivity. I’ve been in leasing offices right after they’ve been rather beat up by someone from the home office and thought to myself, “If a prospect walked in right now, how would these leasing agents bounce back and be in the right frame when they have just been spoken to like that?”
Prospects want a frictionless experience. Today’s prospects can encounter a number of snags in their apartment shopping. This happens consistently: before arriving at a property, a prospect will talk with an agent over the phone or send in an internet query and provide all sorts of information, about things like their pets and the size of apartment they’re looking for, their move-in date. Then, when the prospect visits the community, the agent doesn’t pull up the information, and the prospect is asked to provide the data all over again. That’s a real pain point.
And what about the forgotten void that everyone skips over: what happens throughout the leasing presentation? What questions do prospects need answers to while on tour and are those able to be answered immediately or does the prospect have to wait until they get back to the office for an answer? What expectations does management have about what agents highlight during a tour What do leasing agents say they need at their fingertips and do they have the tools to provide those deliverables?
Also, some systems make it hard for prospects to complete an application. I was recently with an operator while they were testing their online application. They tried five times, unsuccessfully, to make it through the process. The site was timing out on them, and it wasn’t always clear what an applicant should do next.
We as an industry have not mastered simplifying the process anywhere along the journey and definitely not from the point where a prospect says, “Yes, I want this apartment” through approval.
There are technologies out there to address all the pain points prospects feel, and operators must look into these. And as they do, they need to make sure their different technology platforms integrate; this is critical.
In the end, consumers’ expectations regarding their shopping experiences are ever changing. By keeping the ideas above in mind, focusing on making it easy to do business with their property and using their own expertise and insight, operators can create the kinds of leasing experiences prospects will find engaging – and that will ultimately lead to more leases.