Superior handling of inbound calls drives growth of major apartment rental firm

Who's Calling helps Archstone-Smith improve quality of conversations between staff and customers

Archstone-Smith, an S&P 500 company, is a recognized leader in apartment investment and operations. With a current total market capitalization in excess of $18 billion, the company's portfolio is concentrated in many of the most desirable neighborhoods in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area, Southern California, the San Francisco Bay area, the New York City metropolitan area, Boston, Southeast Florida, Chicago and Seattle. Archstone-Smith currently owns or has an ownership position in 271 communities, representing more than 83,000 units, including units under construction.

"Our company grows every day," says Corinne Rabung, Regional Marketing Manager at Archstone-Smith. "That growth is fueled by our reputation to provide great apartments and great apartments, guaranteed. Who's Calling enables us to establish and maintain a set of best practices for managing – and maximizing – the effectiveness of our telephone calls with our customers and prospects."

Archstone-Smith relies on Who's Calling to improve and enhance the call handling skills of over 200 of it's leasing consultants "We use Who's Calling as a positive coaching tool," Rabung explains. "Every week we review inbound calls and our managers sit down with our leasing consultants to reinforce positive behaviors and to talk about how they can improve their conversation skills. As a result, our phone calls have improved dramatically – as evidenced by increased tours and leases."

Hearing your own voice on a call can be a very eye-opening experience, says Rabung. "You don't realize how you sound until you hear yourself. At first it can be intimidating to listen to your calls in front of other people. But now we love it, because it's actually fun and very positive."

To ensure that inbound calls are handled properly, Archstone-Smith has developed a set of standards that can be applied evenly and objectively by all the leasing consultants. "We don't want the calls to sound scripted," Rabung explains. "The best conversation flows naturally from the customer's needs. So we have a check list of points that our leasing consultants try to hit during each call. The conversations sound natural and we cover all the necessary areas."

The checklist also makes it easy for Archstone-Smith to measure the quality of the phone calls and assess the performance of the leasing consultants. "We have a 'one-bar, two-bar, three-bar' grading system based on how many points from the checklist you hit during a call," says Rabung. "Measurement is the key to maintaining a steady rate of improvement."

Better telephone skills translate into higher closing ratios and improved levels of customer satisfaction, says Rabung. "The more leases we can secure and the more we can help our customers appreciate the value of our services, the less money we need to spend on advertising."

Optimized marketing efforts across multiple media channels

Archstone-Smith also uses Who's Calling to measure and optimize the impact of its marketing efforts. "We appeal to a very diverse base of customers – people looking for apartments all over the country," says Rabung. "We put trackable telephone numbers from Who's Calling on Internet sites, banners, print ads, and fliers. Whenever we advertise, we try to include a Who's Calling phone number so we can track the calls and measure the response."

Monthly reports from Who's Calling help Archstone-Smith monitor the performance of its marketing investments and optimize its ad spend. "We can see immediately from the reports which ads are working and which aren't. That gives us a crucial advantage. It's economical, too."

"We use Who's Calling as a positive coaching tool. Every week we review inbound calls and our managers sit down with our leasing consultants to reinforce positive behaviors and to talk about how they can improve their conversation skills. As a result, our phone calls have improved dramatically – as evidenced by increased tours and leases." -- Corinne Rabung Regional Marketing Manager Archstone-Smith

Call 1-866-688-9300 for a free consultation with your local Who's Calling consultant and find out why it pays to know Who's Calling.

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