Customer interaction and service get the digital touch
by Michele Lerner

The failures of broadband providers and other technology misadventures have unquestionably slowed the eagerness of some real estate companies to openly embrace new technology. But like it or not, we live in a digital age in which customers, tenants and employees expect the convenience, efficiency and instant satisfaction that technology allows.

Regardless of the sector they operate in, real estate companies are challenged to attract and retain customers/tenants. Increasingly, technology plays a crucial role in this most vital of business objectives. And although the landscape is littered with horror stories, real estate companies are learning to embrace technology as a way to improve customer interaction and service.

Importance of Strong Data

Improving customer relationships begins with the ability to properly manage customer data. Technology enables companies to improve operations and customer service through more reliable and usable data in nearly every real estate sector.

In the office sector, AmeriVest Properties, Inc. has found that improved data management has taken a lot of hassle out of lease tracking. “We have hundreds of tenants, probably almost 1,000, so it’s very important and challenging to track them all,” says Charles Knight, president of AmeriVest. “With our new lease tracking system we can slice and dice the information in a variety of ways, looking at the portfolio as a whole or on a regional basis. We can also tie this in with the accounting system and look at how many vacancies there are and where we expect them to be in the future.”

A similar result is apparent in the retail sector by Acadia Realty Trust, which has a comparable program to AmeriVest.

“While we’re a smaller REIT, we’ve tried to stay on the cutting edge of technology, and we were one of the first to use a lease projection program,” says Perry Kamerman, Acadia’s chief financial officer. “Instead of manually tracking our leases, they’re now stored in a database. Over the next couple of years we’ll be switching to a browser-based program so that instead of being usable only by our accountants, we’ll have more of an information management system so our leasing agents can go online and access information. This will improve how they interact with customers.”

At Duke Realty Corporation, several projects are underway which are meant to leverage its data systems to better serve its customers.

“First of all, we’re implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) program that we think will help us with our day-to-day operations and leverage our business across other regions beyond our current Midwest and Southeastern regions,” says Paul Quinn, senior vice president and chief information officer. “We expect to roll out the CRM project in the second quarter of 2002. At the same time, we’re introducing a document management system for managing things like lease agreements, vendor insurance documents and legal items. As part of this project, we’ll be scanning tenant payments and creating an auto-cad archive, a contracts archive and an invoice-and-checks archive.”

Enhanced Customer Service

Once companies have a strong handle on internal data management, it becomes easier to leverage technology for improving customer service. Customer service can be improved by simply allowing more information to be accessible online or providing services electronically.

Archstone-Smith Communities, Inc. is working with a pilot project for an online lease program. “Online lease software will allow customers to see what units are available and find out the price without having to visit the site,” says Dan Amedro, CIO for Archstone-Smith. “The program can do a credit check and even accept a deposit online. Right now this is still in the development stage, but we’re learning how customers might use it. Only a few people actually want to lease a place sight unseen. But this new system could work well if someone is relocating. We could give them information about leasing online and then they can take care of [filling out the lease] when they get home.”

Online reservations are nothing new for the hotel industry. But new technology is allowing reservations to be made across the portfolio at MeriStar Hospitality Corporation’s properties, regardless of whether they share the same brand name.

“About 85 of our large hotels that have ample group space for booking conferences have been connected,” says Brian Garavuso, chief technology officer at MeriStar. “Now if one hotel doesn’t have the right rooms or a group decides to meet in another city, our software lets a person in the first hotel book rooms at another hotel instantly. This has been a huge initiative for us and we’ve already seen good financial results. We believe it’s helped us in a tough economy to be able to provide a service that the competition doesn’t have.”

While technology can be used to improve customer service in a variety of sectors, it has also begun to be used as a marketing tool. Several services provide a connection for tenants searching for living or office space and property owners with vacancies.

“One of the most positive applications of technology seems to be with firms such as Apartments.com and CoStar. They are relatively easy to set up, the concept works well, it’s relatively inexpensive and is widely accepted and used by the general public,” says Ken Reed, managing director of property management for Washington Real Estate Investment Trust.

Technology for Tenants

In addition to using technology to improve the services they provide, many companies are improving the technology available specifically for their tenants use so as to attract new tenants as well as retain existing ones. For many companies in the office, lodging or residential sectors, technological capabilities are major selling points.

“Our properties are primarily small tenant office buildings so we’ve focused on technology we can provide to these tenants that they might not be able to afford,” says AmeriVest’s Knight. “We’ve rewired most of our buildings for high-speed data and phone lines, and we provide high-tech conference rooms that are shared by tenants and include speaker phones and high-speed Internet access for laptops and desktops to be used in the room. We also provide security with computer-based video cameras and keyless entry so we have a record of who’s been in and out of the office.”

On the residential side, Greg O’Barry, senior vice president of AMLI Residential Properties Trust, says high-speed Internet access is a major selling point. “It is the most fundamental technology that we’ve put in place in over half of our communities,” he says. “We expect to have the rest in place by the end of 2002, but there’s no national solution to this problem. We have to handle this region by region, and some of the vendors we’ve worked with have gone out of business. For the past five years all our new buildings have included state-of-the-art wiring for video, voice and data services.”

About 100 of MeriStar’s hotels now have fully deployed high-speed Internet access for guests, according to Garavuso. The next level of Internet service is to include web-based concierge services. This is not only applicable to the lodging and residential industries, but also the office sector.

“We launched e-Tenants in May 2000 as a tenant amenity,” says Barbara Yamarick, senior vice president of tenant services and administration for Brandywine Realty Trust. “Our tenants can use it in a variety of ways, including using the buying power of Brandywine to get discounts on office furniture, and placing work orders online and being able to obtain information in real time about the progress of that order. It’s a huge time saver for our clients.”

In a similar move, Archstone-Smith has introduced the “Smith Advantage” in about 25 of its high-rise properties. “The Smith Advantage is basically a community web site that also acts as a tool to provide concierge-type services to our residents,” Amedro says. “We’ve added services from everything as simple as pizza delivery and car rentals to maid services and theater tickets. We’re doing this to provide excellent customer service and because we believe more and more business will be done on the Internet as time goes on.”

Also to improve tenant access, Shurgard Storage Centers Inc. implemented an interactive kiosk system to remedy what it saw as a fundamental flaw in the self-storage industry.

“In December 2000, we introduced a kiosk system, similar to an ATM machine, at our storage sites, to allow customers to make payments or arrange rentals after-hours when the manager is off-site,” says Bill Ward, project coordinator for the S-2 Store Management System and the Kiosk System at Shurgard. “We installed 12 kiosks in 2001 and expect to add 24 more in 2002. Right now this is a store-centric system so that the kiosk only works for that particular store. Now we are developing software that will link these kiosks to our store management system so that customers will have the ability to access information about additional storage facilities.

Managing Maintenance

While concierge services and 24-hour access are a luxury provided to many tenants, new technology can also be used to improve a more basic service: maintenance. Systems are now being developed to allow property managers and tenants to place maintenance orders and track them online. The challenge is to make any online functions user-friendly and more efficient than just picking up the telephone for both the tenant and the company. More than 50 percent of Brandywine’s work orders are already handled through e-Tenants.

“Our old system needed to be upgraded and the new one that we introduced in early 2002 allows tenants to submit an order online and check on it,” Quinn says. “Dispatchers can be reached by cell phone and suppliers can do their work orders through the web.”

AMLI will also soon begin using a new work order system run on the web.

“We get thousands of work orders from residents every month and with our paper-based system it was hard to track,” O’ Barry says. “This new system should allow us to track productivity in our maintenance operations not only on each property but also nationally. This will help us increase our efficiency and our ability to make the right product choices.”

As the economy stabilizes and real estate companies regain confidence in technology investments, companies will begin exploring other products to enhance productivity, reduce costs and improve customer service. By improving their internal resources and the services they offer for tenants, companies are finding that even the smallest technology improvements can make a significant impact.