Our Director of Customer Success, Alejandra Mansilla, sat down with Claudia Giannetta, National Marketing Director New Development at Fore Property, to discuss her experience with the Nurture Boss product and the Nurture Boss team.
Claudia has been a Nurture Boss champion since the beginning. Her collaboration and participation in the product building process at Nurture Boss has helped us to build a superior solution that solves real problems onsite teams are dealing with. It doesn’t hurt that she’s an expert at what she does either 🥳
Take a watch/listen below, where you will also find the entire transcript.
We love hearing from our customers and collaborating with them to build better products!
How Long Have You Been Using Nurture Boss?
We are going on, so, probably since the inception of Nurture Boss or shortly after their first year of inception. So this is year two for us. So we did a test pilot in 2020 of September. I think that was 2019 or 2020. I can’t remember exactly. But year two now.
What Is The Biggest Impact You Are Seeing As A Result Of Using Nurture Boss?
Wow. So biggest impact? There are several. But if I had to hone in on the biggest impact, I would say really is the increase we’ve seen in just conversion. So bottom line would be our conversion and moving customers through the pipeline. I’d say in a cost savings manner and labor savings manner. So I’d probably say if I were to focus on something, it would be our conversion altogether.
What Has Your Experience With The Nurture Boss Schedule A Tour Feature Been Like?
Yes. And what’s really exciting for me is to actually be a part of that and watch it. So I’m actually part of the notifications and alerts. I choose to do that so that I can really see the action and what’s happening and more importantly, to kind of keep my eye and close watch on quality assurance as well.
I’ll take our two most recent, but I’ll take our one property who I think we’re seeing the most volume. It happens to be in Orlando, Florida, where the top volume of traffic is happening today in our nation. But nonetheless, I would say every day, and I smile every day I get a notification, but the scheduler tour notification feature, this property gets at least one per day. At least one per day.
I checked again this morning. They’ve already had two auto scheduler tours come in that was self scheduled by the customer and it drops right into the CRM
So I love the notification for the team because oftentimes they might be pulled away from their CRM systems. They love it because it’s kind of just that extra reminder for them if they are sitting at their desk. But the best part is it drops right into their CRM calendar for them. So there isn’t any extra steps.
Can You Tell Us About How Fore Property Is Leveraging Automation With Nurture Boss?
Oh, 100%. And I think I’ll kind of focus a bit on this high volume because I think that’s where we’re seeing this property, 19 South in Orlando. I want to take probably where you see the most success. And truly it’s where we’re seeing this high volume, where we are fully staffed. We’re not operating with a skeleton crew. We are fully staffed. It allows the team to focus on the people who are in front of them.
So this is a team that has double digit tours. And by double digit, I don’t mean just 15, 20 tours a week. Week over week they have 40 first shows. We refer to them as first shows. So week over week, even during the seasonal, what would have been a seasonal slowdown, they are having high high volume and it’s truly saving them time. And that extra labor intensiveness and really helping to move the touch points.
The automated touch points really help to move those who are most interested in making a decision today who are ready to pull the trigger, moving them through the pipeline
Get them on the schedule a tour books so that they can show up and once they show up we leave it up to the team and this team, they happen to be just a superstar team. So we easily see week over week a 50% closing ratio that’s very high for our industry but nonetheless I think it goes to show we are moving the consumer who’s ready to make a decision through the pipeline much more quickly I think than what we would call a more traditional style follow up.
What Was The Implementation Process Like With Nurture Boss?
Very easy, very simple. Not as much work has to be put on my end which is pretty critical but with the automated set up there is some time initially just up front. So specifically if we are looking to do more customizations which we’ve recently done at a couple of our two newest lease ups. So with customization and really that’s by my choice we are testing a few different ways that we’re following up at two of our newest lease ups that are still in a construction phase. But I’d say everything is up and running I would say within just seven to ten business days if not sooner.
And then those 1st 30 days I think are pretty critical with just making sure our messaging is what we needed to say and then just having our check ins. So I’d say the biggest thing is having your support team and your support from client services to really just have a dedicated individual on your team that helps keep me on my toes and helps us do the testing and I like to call breaking down the system. I’m like if I can break it then so can somebody else but nonetheless it’s pretty critical but very easy implementation, very easy onboarding process with the team I will say I think it’s super vital to have your team members on boarded and have them see the value add and to continue to have maybe just touchpoint refresher training.
There’s not a lot of training that’s involved because it’s automated, but nonetheless, it’s important for them to understand the purpose of the program and that it’s a tool that’s going to help make their lives a bit easier on site.
Do You Use Nurture Boss At Construction or Pre-Lease Properties?
Yeah certainly. I’ll take our two newest projects here in Phoenix. They’re both in the construction phase so this is the first time we are utilizing the program during the construction phase and so really the ultimate goal with that is to create awareness in the market, right. So we’re a brand new property so we’re in the brand awareness stages. We’re not showing our entity yet, we’re not able to tour yet. We’re not even able to do virtual tours yet. So it’s really creating that excitement and still driving.
At the time when we launched we had almost full websites up and operating but at minimum we had a splash page. So we had a landing page or a core splash page. And the goal was to start to capture some of that early interest phase. So the goal was to capture what we were calling “Join our Interest List” or “Join the VIP List”. But nonetheless, it was to join the interest phase and really just capture anybody who’s maybe starting to show interest and then really
just guiding them through different touch points, purposeful touch points during what I’ll call that early shopper or early interest phase.
And that’s where you and I were really working, I think, and Jake as well, probably week over week, kind of just what’s the messaging? How can we improve this? How do we just really create excitement? And especially when we can’t really send them anywhere yet, at least we can send them to our website. So we came up with different landing pages, right? Let’s send them to the amenities and get them excited about a specific amenity that they’ll get to enjoy. Let’s get them to follow us on social. So that’s big for us during the generating interest phase.
So I would say just initially out of the gate, it’s working great. And I’m excited to see it move into now, the next phases as we continue to move into securing leases. For example, right now, we finally moved it to the apply now. So the exciting time for us is we’ve been able now to change those CTAs or the call to actions , to actually get a resident to take action if they wanted to.
What Would You Say Your Favorite Thing About Nurture Boss Is?
You know, I love my partnership with this entire team with Jake and Jessica and you, Alejandra, with Liana, with I mean, even just the engineers, Carson and Jeremiah. I love just the partnership.
I think we all have a similar interest in what we want to see with this product and where we want this product to go. And I’m super excited because I work for a merchant builder. So we build design. We are a business builder. So we move fast. We move at lots of phases that are different. And I think what was most exciting for me was to finally find a product that allowed us more specifically to be able to reach out to I hate using the word prospects, but for lack of a better word, reach out to shoppers or consumers or future residents.
So reach out to our shoppers or future residents, by the way of mass texting them during their early shopping stages. So while they are in what you call that prospect stage in the CRM system, it was really critical for us to reach out to them the way that they want to hear from us and to be able to do it effectively and efficiently. And so I’d say that first, I loved watching how the platform has completely evolved, especially within two years. So there are so many new features and enhancements.
So even if you take that new schedule a tour feature that comes direct with the follow up and just game changer, I really am looking for game changer in this industry. I mean, retailers, we’ve all been part of the retail shopper experience. Retailers have been doing it for years. So to finally see it happening in the multifamily sector really excites me. And I’m just thrilled to be a part of a program, and like I said, I know it’s a few things, but I think it would really be that automation that really stands out and
truly just the partnership, working with people who are like, “what are your needs”? “What do you see consumers wanting”? And how can we make this a more effective process for both consumer
right, There’s two clients, I’m the client, and then the customer is the client.
So I think we have to always keep that in mind when we’re developing or enhancing or creating products that we’ve got the two clients. So us, who is your end client and then our end user, which is our consumers and our long term residents.
What ROI Have You Seen Since Using Nurture Boss?
This is a value add tool. This is truly a value add system. And the goal is, wouldn’t we all like to get more heads on beds? So I look at it, we all want to get more heads on beds more quickly, more efficiently. We want our teams working more efficiently, And I want our teams focusing on the relationships they need to be building with their customers. So I really see this as a conversion tool. So I think that’s what I would always focus on i s that this is not an advertising source. We can still measure. We’re already looking at it, especially with the new, we can still measure just like we’ve done. We can see the activity that we’re getting from Nurture Boss.
There’s no doubt that just the activity that comes in alone, the tool itself is paying for itself, because we don’t have to go hire another person, and most of the time, we are already fully staffed.
I know that’s a challenge in many markets today. We’re fortunate we do run into those challenges, too. So imagine if you have a team or a skeleton crew and you’re able to implement this tool. And more importantly, I think if I were to say anybody budgeting for this type of tool, this should go into your resident retention. This shouldn’t go into advertising expenses. I would personally put this in resident retention because it’s truly what it is. I mean, ultimately, it’s a tool that helps create conversion, and then going forward, all the programs we’ve got in place is about creating resident retention, event planning, birthdays, resident referral programs, whatever you want to call it, is about creating community. It’s a resident retention tool, ultimately.
