Interactive Voice Response Becomes Multifamily’s Latest Go-To AI Tool
Machine learning’s advancements continue to bring greater efficiency to operations.
Voice-recognition AI is the next big thing in artificial intelligence. Commercial real estate companies are starting to experiment with it as a way to improve operations.
Consumers are gradually becoming more exposed to this technology, as oftentimes, customer service phone lines will indicate that they recognize or are measuring the caller’s voice through pitch, tone and dialect.
Brandon Hornibrook, Digital Marketing Director, Berkshire Residential Investments, discussed its use during a panel at National Multifamily Housing Council’s OpTech Conference on Wednesday at National Harbor, Md.
McDonald’s is partnering with IBM Watson to use interactive voice response (IVR) to expedite service lines and to track customers’ sales behaviors in its drive-thrus. IVR is a telephone system that allows data to be collected over the phone via voice recognition or keypad response.
“Other benefits would be to improve accuracy of orders and save on labor costs,” Hornibrook said. “They can also help to project future outcomes.”
Hornibrook, however, emphasized that he envisions this technology to better enable human employees and not to replace them.
These systems have been around, Hornibrook said, it’s just taken a lot of time “for them to record hundreds, if not thousands or iterations.”
Development continues to create multilingual IVR systems, Hornibrook said.
Apartment Marketers Relying More on AI
Machine learning has helped virtual leasing assistants (or bots) to handle initial inquiries by prospect residents, answering basic questions such as availability, rents, and scheduling tours. Hornibrook said its applications for multifamily marketing include helping to determine “what’s not converting” for lead management.
He said apartment marketers are “tracking consumer behavior” with AI with a mindful eye on fair housing and advertising.
AI can also be used with marketing automation, website analytics, prescriptive analytics for pay-per-click (PPC) and Internet of Things (IoT) smart-home technology, Hornibrook also noted.