As we enter the summer rental season, storage owners and operators are gearing up to meet the increased demand for self storage in the coming weeks. As more operators rely heavily on self storage technology to reduce costs and deliver a seamless and personalized customer experience, it’s essential for business to assess and audit their tenant’s journey to ensure no rental opportunity slips through. In this article, we will explore the importance of capitalizing on every marketing opportunity this rental season, how to conduct a technology audit, as well as cover key customer touchpoints to ensure your operation and technology are ready for the 2024 rental season.
Understanding the Landscape and Seizing Marketing Opportunities
The storage industry experiences seasonal fluctuations, with spring marking the onset of heightened activity. Storage owners and operators must use this time to position and ready themselves strategically to leverage this influx of potential customers. Consequently, with the looming uncertainty around home sales and high interest rates, operators must ensure their marketing is “dialed in” and they are competitive both online and offline to prospective tenants. One way to ensure your operation is ready is to conduct a technology audit from a customer’s point of view to make sure you have maximum visibility and appeal to potential customers.
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Conducting a Self Storage Technology Audit
A self storage technology audit is a systematic review of the technology and platforms used to facilitate tenant interactions and experiences at your facility. It involves evaluating the effectiveness, efficiency, and usability of these solutions to identify areas for improvement or optimization. By conducting regular self storage technology audits, businesses can enhance customer satisfaction, increase operational efficiency, and stay competitive in the self storage marketplace.
To get started, evaluate every touchpoint where a tenant can find you. In an increasingly digital world, you will find many of these will be via search engines, your website, via the call center and from signage at the property. Due to recent updates to Google’s algorithms, one area to hone in on is your Google Business Profile page. The search engine giant now places greater emphasis on business profiles that are regularly updated, relevant to users’ queries, and most importantly now, are open according to the listed open hours. Operators with a full-service, self storage kiosk onsite should update their service hours to 24/7 or extend past the regular staffed hours. It has been reported that updating these hours in Google Business Profiles can dramatically impact the facility’s ranking and traffic to the facility. According to Tommy Nguyen, StoragePug Co-founder, in a recent article, “to put it as simply as possible, you can go from ranking #1 locally to ranking much worse – even as bad as 20th and beyond. It all depends on whether your business is currently open or closed.” Read the full article here.
Now that you have every touch point listed, begin to evaluate and assess the performance of each. An example of one way to evaluate phone calls would be to look at call wait times, and customer satisfaction scores, review call recordings and see if you can identify common issues and opportunities for training or process improvements. Industry stats show that 1 in 4 prospective customers call a facility to make first contact, and six in 10 will rent from the first facility they can reach. Do you know how your calls perform? Download this simple cheat sheet for 5 ways to measure if you’re making the most of phone-based rental opportunities at your facilities.
Other common tenant touch points include social media, facility websites, emails, signage, and curb appeal. It’s important at this stage to consider your existing customers’ journey. How does the area look around the keypad? Often overlooked, the keypad is really the front door to your property for many existing customers. In addition to a technical assessment, gather feedback from customers and frontline staff to gain further understanding of items that positively or negatively impact the customer experience.
Know Your Consumer.
Download the 2024 Self Storage White Paper today and use dozens of data points gathered in 2023 to help make decisions that remove friction in your operation and build savings into your bottom line.
Implementing Your Self Storage Technology Audit
Based on the audit findings and feedback collected, develop a prioritized action plan to address identified gaps and opportunities for improvement. Allocate resources and define timelines to implement necessary changes and enhancements. Download our free 2024 annual analysis of self storage tenant behavior trends and data insights here. Operators utilizing access control data have created predictive analytics to further optimize their customer journeys and drive business outcomes (maintenance schedules, rent rate increases, etc.).
As operators increasingly rely on technology to cut costs and provide a seamless, personalized customer experience, its crucial for businesses to ensure they have an ongoing audit to ensure no rental opportunities are missed.
