Capital Square Living Positions Itself for Managed Portfolio Growth

The Challenge: Maintaining Boutique-level Service Amid Management Growth

Growth always comes with growing pains, but Capital Square Living is committed to delivering an attentive, personalized experience to its residents, while optimizing the performance of its assets. The company needed to identify technology solutions it could strategically leverage to ensure the success of its transition plan.

“The ultimate goal was to manage our owned assets, better serve our investors and do that with a more intimate, hands-on approach that fits our boutique portfolio,” said Ryan Perez, Executive Vice President of Capital Square Living. “We enjoyed wonderful third-party management partnerships over the years, but the time was right for us to bring operations in-house. However, we also wanted to make sure we conducted the transition in the right way and took advantage of the opportunity to implement solutions that positioned us for success right from the start.” 

The Solution: Equip Service Teams with SmartRent Solutions for Efficient, Responsive Service

Perez said the advantage of a boutique, self-managed portfolio is the ability to be nimble and expedite decision-making. By managing its own assets, Capital Square Living is poised to solicit feedback from its property teams on their preferred workflow systems and technologies, and implement those tools as it puts its own management model in place. “We encouraged service team feedback because as a new management company we wanted to be very selective and intentional about assembling our tech stack,” Perez said. “The perspectives of our site teams are incredibly valuable and important to us. And it mattered to them to have a seat at the table during the decision process.”

Give them what they want

Service teams felt strongly about using SmartRent Work Management, a mobile maintenance workflow platform, and Answer Automation, which automates task generation from service phone calls and enhances communication with residents.

Capital Square Living vetted multiple technologies, including Work Management and Answer Automation, and confirmed the SmartRent solutions were a better fit for its portfolio — both for on-site teams and residents. The company decided to implement SmartRent Work Management at each new community it brings under management and continue to expand its use as the managed portfolio grows.

“SmartRent checked all the boxes, from mobile integration to user interface, support, the rate card, everything as you're going down the list, they met our criteria,” Perez said. “Full integration is critical for us because we demand data integrity. Reporting is very important, usability is important, and the ability to mask the cell phone numbers of service team members is essential to protect their personal information. Maintenance response is a much more seamless process, especially after hours, when our technicians can respond from their own mobile devices, and SmartRent ensures that their private information stays private.”

Partnership is paramount

Perez said SmartRent has been a tremendous partner during the transition to in-house management.“All new companies like ours experience challenges. But SmartRent has been patient with our internal process changes and remained responsive,” Perez said. “It can be difficult bringing on this many units month over month, but we have ironed out the process and landed on a really good cadence. Anytime we experience issues or have questions, I have a set team that I know that I can always email and or call and reach somebody. Their willingness to be helpful and collaborative has been refreshing.”

The Results: Service Teams, Residents Embrace SmartRent Solutions

Since transitioning its service teams off other maintenance platforms and onto SmartRent Work Management, Capital Square Living has heard only positive things from its on-site associates.“We have had great feedback from every team we have onboarded onto Work Management. The service teams really seem to love the tool,” Perez said. “The service workflow gives us the ability to respond to residents through the app, as opposed to going back into our property management system. And SmartRent Answer Automation makes sure we don’t miss a request that’s called in after hours. Our communication and responsiveness is greatly improved.”

Perez said residents like the visibility into the status of their service requests, and the direct lines of communication with service teams. The ability to submit service requests on their own, without navigating the property website portal, is also appreciated.

Data integrity is unmatched

The direct integration with the PMS software also creates peace of mind that resident data is protected.“The data retrieval process through the PMS into the SmartRent platform is done very well,” Perez said. “A lot of proptech vendors claim to have direct integration but sometimes the product just runs alongside the PMS software or has select access. SmartRent’s integrations have full and continuous visibility into the PMS and maintain the integrity of that data.”Capital Square Living has the confidence in SmartRent products and service to lean on the partnership during the rapid growth of its managed portfolio, and beyond.

What SmartRent solutions do for Capital Square Living

SmartRent’s Work Management and Answer Automation solutions make Capital Square Living’s team’s job easier by offering the following:

Work Management:

• Easy-to-use workflow platform, available on both iOS and Android for mobile and tablet devices
• Elimination of duplicated efforts, and flexible virtual workspaces
• Improved efficiencies resulting in improved customer service, revenue collections rates, and reduced payment delinquencies
• Advanced reporting using advanced filters and easily exportable data into third-party tools for deeper analysis

Answer Automation:

• Call masking guarantees that residents always pick up to the main community number by masking team members phone numbers.
• Professional greetings to welcome callers with professionally recorded prompts, custom multilingual announcements, and on-hold marketing.
• 24/7 phone answering to provide service, no matter the hour, with an interactive caller experience: office hours, directions, urgent maintenance and service requests, etc.
• Efficient call routing to Improve response time to the right team member, with up to 10 levels of escalation.
• Seamless integration with all major property management systems to immediately recognize residents via CallerID and deliver a personalized experience.