Adding automated payments to your self storage facility can make life a lot easier. But where do you begin? Discover ways to start simple, and how your customers will respond, below!
In this Gabfocus Spotlight, Josh Parker of Storage Authority and AJ Osborne of Store Local discuss how you can add automated payments to your self storage facility.
Question: "How do you add automated payments to your self storage facility?
Check out the video clip below to hear their answer:
In this Gabfocus Session: Automating Your Facility, we spoke with AJ Osborne (Store Local), Mason Levy (Swivl), and Josh Parker (Storage Authority). We had a great time discussing automation in the self storage industry.
Check out the full Session to dive deeper!
Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what the experts had to say:
I think it's acceptable to have a slow rolling or maybe even a fast rolling, but process to it.
So it doesn't have to be a flip of a switch and you're 100% no checks and cash.
It's ok roll it out. At the same time, you've got to determine what is the percentage of tenants that you're willing to potentially lose when you make that switch.
And a lot of that is going to have to do with the demand in your area and what you would consider to be a reasonable risk.
— Josh Parker
When you look at fees and delinquencies associated, we see a direct result through automated payments, through less delinquencies occurring, and it happens on two fold. It happens, I think, because of the customers that you're accepting. Right.
But it also has the payment method. We also find that we have higher retention rates amongst rising rental rates. So when somebody walks in to give you that check and you've got to say it's $15 more, they're ticked. When it's an automatic payment, they don't know. And so what we found was that delinquencies shrunk, which people in storage know, you don't make money when you take people to auction. That's how this works. We lose money. The manpower of trying to get that money back right, the expense associated with it. When we lowered our delinquencies and forced automated payments, the revenue at every single facility stabilized, rose. We had less move outs. Upon giving rental rate increases. It was agnostic to age, type or person.
— AJ Osborne
