Kevin Thompson of Avalon Bay - The Call Center Solution

Kevin Thompson, the VP of Marketing at Avalon Bay, wrote a terrific piece on the benefits of call centers entitled, “Is that a Lease on the Line.“With the overwhelming amount of leads being generated online with sites like Rent.com, ApartmentMarketer.com, ForRent.com, MyNewPlace.com, Apartments.com, and others, Kevin outlines the importance of using call centers to increase leases. Below is a summary of the article.  

•   By year end, estimated that 18 of the top 31 markets for the multi-family industry will not be at a “supply and demand” balance  
•   Cities that will experience high vacancy rates
  •   Austin, Charlotte, Houston, Tampa Bay  
•   Industry has a mediocre lead-to-traffic (appointment) conversion rate of 5-15%  
•   85-90% of the nations 25,000 communities have yet to incorporate a call center  
•   Avalon Bay Case Study:
  •   2003 Internet leads were 24% of total leads  
  •   Today it is over 53% of total leads  
  •   Number of 24/7 leads had overwhelmed the leasing office  
  •   Apartment Industry Lead Data
    •   Respond to only 40% of all email leads
      •   Response time is slow for those they do respond to  
  •   On-Site leasing teams convert 10-15 % of all calls to appointments  
•   The Call Center Solution
  •   Introduced a 3rd party call center into the mix of a subset of their communities
    •   Data before call center implementation
      •   Responded to 75% of email leads  
        •   Average of 8 hours to answer these emails  
      •   Telephone calls had a 10 - 15 % conversion rate to actual site visit  
      •   On average held prospects in conversation for 2.5 minutes  
      •   Answer both email and phone from 9 - 5 workday  
      •   Goal was to increase a higher % of leads into site visits  
    •   Data after call center implementation
      •   Outsourced employees had extensive training on the Avalon Brand and communities  
      •   Responded to 98% of all calls immediately  
      •   On average held prospects in conversation for 4.7 minutes  
      •   25 - 40% call-to-appointment conversion rates  
      •   Email response rate went from 75% response within 8 hours to 100% response rate within 2 hours because of 24/7 call center service  
      •   21% of all leases came from guest cards that were generated from outside normal 9-5 business hours  
      •   6 months of pilot captured 21,000 additional phone and email leads which turned into 1,200 leases  
      •   Most likely these 1,200 new leases would not have been accomplished without the implementation of the call center