Aggregate portfolio rep score across 2,000+ locations increased from 241 in 2013 to 709 in 2021
Business listing services generated 36 more leads, 10 more gross leases, and $108,000 added value per location in 2021
The Big Story
Partnership.
A partnership that began around a robust reputation management solution evolved into something much bigger. Greystar™, the global leader in rental housing, started working with Reputation in 2013. The collaboration and innovation has blossomed ever since.
In an industry where 70% of customer decisions are directly impacted by reviews, Greystar needed an enterprise level solution that advanced its customer engagement strategy. From developing new products and managed services, to customized reporting and amplifying rep scores — while Greystar scaled, Reputation scaled with them.
Reputation is flexible and nimble. When I come with a business challenge, it’s never a ‘no’, it’s a ‘let’s figure that out.”
Jaemi Carkin, Director of Innovation, Supplier Relations and Customer Experience at Greystar
Who is Greystar?
In 1993, when Founder, Chairman, and CEO Bob Faith set out to build Greystar, he envisioned the need for a rental housing industry leader — a blue-chip company that operated with the highest integrity and character in delivering world-class services to residents, property owners, and investors.
With a winning strategy and a focus on people, Greystar continues to meet that need, guided by the mission of enriching the lives touched by doing things the right way.
Over the years, Greystar has learned what’s important to people when it comes to a place to call home. That’s why Greystar continually strives to provide beautiful living environments and innovative services that enhance the living experience. They take pride in knowing that homes are inviting places for residents to celebrate life’s important moments.
It has been wonderful to see the comradery and pride that comes from delivering a resident experience that goes beyond expectations.”
Greg Benson, Managing Director of Marketing Operations at Greystar
From Challenges to Partnerships
2,600 community locations across 40+ states representing more than 1.5M residents. Growing numbers means growing reviews, more than 208,000 in 2021.
Greg Benson, Managing Director of U.S. Property Marketing, said it best, “There’s no escaping it. Your successes and failures as a property management company — those reviews are out there for everyone to see and you can be certain they’ll impact a resident’s leasing decision.”
Greystar knew that from the start.
ChallEnge 1
In 2013, the company was ahead of the industry curve by understanding and managing their reputation online, but that came with a cost. Employees were setting Google reminders, Facebook notifications, ApartmentRatings.com alerts, the list goes on and on. There were no insights. Location response audits were manual. The work effort was not sustainable. Greystar needed a scalable solution to successfully manage resident communications offline and online.
Challenge 2
As the focus on reviews in the multifamily industry grew, Greystar wanted to know how they stacked up against the competition. With years of proven success with Reputation in their pocket, Greystar knew who to turn to.
Greystar came in for reputation management, and stayed for competitive analysis (and beyond).
The Solution
From measuring reputation scores across hundreds of locations to handling reviews and responses, reporting, and managed services for Google listings, suffice it to say Greystar has leveraged the robust capabilities offered by Reputation. In fact, the longer each location added to the Greystar portfolio was on the platform, the higher their rep score became — from 500 to 700 on average. Easily monitoring reviews in just one place became part of their operational processes and residents were getting the answers they needed from management.
As the company’s footprint expanded, they continued to tap into Reputation’s partnership. Greystar had a customer engagement strategy locked in, so it was time to become an expert in the competitive landscape. And as any dynamic partner would do, Reputation built the product to support the initiative.
Greystar has since then used Reputation’s competitive intelligence tools to measure and benchmark their scores against best-in-class competitors and identify location strengths and weaknesses for improvement. Additionally, business development teams weave the intuitive competitive data into growth strategies to win their growing markets. This data is even used to foster healthy competition internally with contests and promotions measured by Reputation’s competitive reporting.
It’s clear that considering the customer’s voice to significantly improve the residential experience while leaning into Reputation’s innovation to support overall business growth brings us right back to Greystar’s winning strategy and focus on people.
So the Greystar/Reputation partnership continues. As Jaemi Carkin, Director at Greystar said, “Reputation takes our platform to the next level,” and we’re not stopping now.
Reputation takes our platform to the next level, and we’re not stopping now.”
Jaemi Carkin, Director of Innovation, Supplier Relations and Customer Experience at Greystar