Hi all, I hope 2019 is off to an amazing start and you are keeping up with your new year’s resolution! Just like you, I&I has goals to reach as well. Today, we are going to talk about some of our new features that are helping us achieve our goal of changing the status quo of residential experience.
Let’s talk about some of the 2019 changes. First, it’s not change for the sake of change. That said, change is inevitable, and something to be embraced, etc. etc., but that’s not a good enough reason to change. A good reason to change is because you want to remove friction from a process and make it simpler for residents to connect with their community association. As with all system or process changes, these implementations are done with the community’s best interests in mind.
The expectations of community living are changing. Residents are expecting a much higher focus on experience from their community associations (and us).
Help me welcome our Resident Success Team
We used to have a traditional system of having one person answer the phone and politely making the transfer to the correct extension. However, Community Managers were often out on the field leaving our callers no choice but to leave a voicemail on certain occasions. Well, I am happy to say that gone are the days of residents needing to leave a voicemail if they call during business hours. Our Resident Success Agents (RSAs) are part of what is called a “Round Robin” approach. Simply put, the call gets automatically sent to the agent that has been idle the longest. Our RSA team is equipped with a ton of new features to better support our residents. Here’s a quick list:
1. Live chat capabilities
2. Internal and external knowledge-based articles
3. Searchable community news feeds
4. Resident interaction history all in one screen
Our purpose for this change is to provide the best possible service, accurately, and without any transfers or voicemails. Keep in mind that this is for residents. Board Members should still contact their Community Managers directly by means of either their direct office or cell phone. We feel this is a more cohesive approach to getting things done!
Introducing our unity portals
We’re going to significantly invest in designing ways to help residents better connect with each other and their community association. Our unity platform is the first step in that direction. The old online portal was through a 3rd party that provided us with zero customization. We are now the designers and creators of the online unity portal. We named it unity simply because that is the sole purpose of our system, to bring unity to your neighborhood. Some of the key features that are either available now or coming soon are:
1. Intuitive search bar for questions
2. Live chat (see RSA section above)
3. Community forum for questions, ideas, and suggestions
4. Training videos and tutorials
5. Board member reports for violations history, architectural statuses and work orders
6. Frequently viewed or trending topics automatically highlighted
7. Group chat capabilities for Board Members and Committee Members
We are certainly excited for these upgrades but challenging the status quo of residential experience is no easy task. Thanks to all of our insightful customers, we have this wonderful opportunity to help create frictionless systems for our residents to enjoy.
We’ll not bore you with all of the details and thinking behind the new internal processes – you’re busy people, and our main intention for this post was to let our clients know about the changes to the user interface side. We thank you and welcome all ideas and feedback below.
- Sal Silva, CEO of I&I
