Yardi Virtuoso is the AI powered suite of services sold by Yardi as a bundle. It’s made of up for their latest CRM offering, as well as their latest Chat system offering. According to Yardi it “delivers automation technology across a variety of applications to expedite workflows, increase efficiency and augment teams for improved performance and better net operating income." This essentially means it is an updated set of tools to help Yardi customers better automate tasks within Yardi Voyager, and communicate with customers.
You can read our introduction to Yardi Virtuoso here, and you can read how Leasing Chat helps with Yardi Virtuoso here.
The takeaways from this post won’t all be specific to Yardi Virtuoso and it’s Chat features - they can also be applied to other AI based chatbot technologies. This will also be applicable to chatbot considerations across other industries, but of course we will be focused on applications within the Multifamily Industry here.
Yardi Voyager 8
Yardi Virtuoso was [just recently announced](Yardi Announces Virtuoso, A Human-centered Approach to AI - Yardi), and is an integrated part of Voyager 8. It is not rolled out in any significant way yet. New customers onboarding over the coming months will be put on Voyager 8, but Voyager 7 users will have to work with their sales reps to upgrade. It is being released slowly so far.
Once onboarded there will be improved Live Chat features, the biggest of which is the ability to add new intents to the AI chatbot. This can improve it’s automated capabilities, but can require some work to use correctly. It’s currently setup as a way to upsell customers on the Yardi Call Center Support packages.
Yardi Virtuoso Chat - The Bad
What many properties don’t realize when adding an automated Chat Bot to their property websites, is that it takes time and effort to manage the chat system, attend it, and update it regularly. The new features surrounding the Chat on Virtuosos are human powered, and indeed Yardi is currently marketing their Viruoso Chat as a “Human-Centered Approach to AI”.
Here at Leasing Chat we feel this is the best way to approach AI Chat, but it is uncharacteristic of some of the competing services.
To do it’s job well, the Virutuoso Chatbot needs to be be extensively trained to manage high probability questions, and hand-off to live support needs to be integrated and managed so customers have the option of speaking to a real human to support them.
Leasing Chat & Yardi Virtuoso Chat
Leasing Chat is a Live Chat Leasing Support Service, offering live Leasing Consultants to assist prospects on property websites and other online channels. Leasing Chat works with many chat platforms, but we specialize in Yardi Chat IQ and Yardi Virtuosos Chat.
The Biggest Problems with Yardi Virtuoso Chat:
Upgrading to Yardi Voyager 8 and Yardi Virtuoso Chat and adding it to your property pages is only the start of an effective Chatbot and Live Chat solution. It’s easy to turn it on, and it’s easy to let it run - but it is NOT easy to get it serving prospects well.
“People hate the bot!” - Property Offices
We hear this all the time. Prospects and residents call and email the property office expressing their frustrations with the Yardi Virtuoso bot. They have been attempting to self-service their needs, but have not been getting the information they need, or have been getting bounced back and forth between automated prompts. Yardi Chatbots can be VERY frustrating if it’s not managed well.
How We Help - Speak to a Leasing Agent:
One thing Yardi Virtuoso can be good at is making it clear to prospects and users that it is in-fact a bot. It clearly states it is a bot, and welcomes the user as a bot. This is actually a good thing, because it allows the prospect to make a decision about the service they want right from the outset of the conversation.
Prospects will often ask to speak to a real person right away. This is common not just in live-chat on a website, but think about calling into an automated phone answering service — the first thing a customer wants to do is dial ‘0’ to get to support and speak to someone. Few people want to go through the automated pathways and spend their time interacting with a bot when there is a better alternative.
How to Use Yardi Virtuoso Chat the Right Way:
It’s very simple. Yardi Viruoso Chat is build and designed around allowing conversations to be handed off to a live support team, and then allowing the support team to build new intents into the system to expand the self-serving capabilities of the chatbots. There are 3 ways this can be done.
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You can have Leasing Agents at your properties manage the live chat support. This can be fraught with many issues and in our experience does not work out well in most cases.
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You can hire Yardi’s support team to manage the live chat support for you. This is expensive and can pigeonhole you into being stuck deeper in the Yardi ecosystem. Yardi’s in house call center support team is also limited in the amount of questions they can answer, and the ways they can serve a particular property. This is because they are working for many different management companies at the same time, and limit the information they store in house to what is built into Yardi’s system. This leads to impersonal interactions and often still leaves customers with unanswered questions.
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You can contract Leasing Chat to manage the live chat support for you. We provide a higher quality service than Yardi, we are more dedicated to the customer outcomes than Yardi, and we will work with you and your properties to build the best possible outcome and fit the needs of each property we represent.
Conclusions:
It’s difficult to navigate the live chat options in the multifamily space. There are seemingly new services and features available every week. No matter what tools you use, and how you decide to use them - the focus should ALWAYS be on the customer experience. If you are leaving even a small percentage of your prospects with a frustrating experience, you a putting your properties at a disadvantage. And let’s face it - the market is more competitive now than ever, and these things matter.