The past year has seen a big upheaval in commercial real estate, and companies are getting very creative with how they think about their portfolios. It’s also a highly acquisitive market, specifically with regard to healthcare transactions for senior living facilities and healthcare treatment facilities. Companies need to adapt in order to grow in a time of unexpected challenges and opportunities, and the most successful businesses take advantage of technology to streamline operations, consolidate data, and create a better experience for both employees and clients. 

The value of commercial real estate technology 

From the first moment you capture a lead to the final steps of a tenant’s move-out, Salesforce can offer support at every step of the customer journey. Salesforce enables you to reach the right tenant at the right time with the right message, and improve their experience through analytics, surfaced insights, and communications targeted to their specific needs. This technology offers benefits in these key areas: 

• Client and tenant acquisition: Many real estate companies want to centralize lead capture, including multi-channel activities like property walk-ins, referrals, ads, and website. Salesforce works to manage listings, automate lead capture, and set appointments so clients can better measure ROI. 
• Application and onboarding: As tenants show interest, many aspects of workflow management are great candidates for automation and cross-team collaboration. Salesforce helps manage applications, capture documents, dispatch action plans, and schedule tenant move-in. 
• Client and tenant retention: A great client/tenant experience is critical for maximizing asset return. Scaling and automating white glove service is critical for operations. Salesforce solutions help personalize communications, drive key dates like move-in/move-out, and manage leases. 

How Salesforce empowers real estate teams 

Over the course of your company’s relationship with a tenant, different teams will interact with the tenant in different ways. There are the salespeople who make initial contact and sort out contract details, the service workers who provide support, and the property managers who maintain the space and make repairs. Salesforce helps each team refine their processes while providing greater visibility into the client, making sure everyone is on the same page. 

Sales and Leasing

It all starts with the sale, and Salesforce gives you the tools you need to acquire tenants, find the space they need, and keep them satisfied so they renew in the future. An interactive dashboard feeds information from both within and outside of Salesforce to show you what’s happening at your organization and in the larger marketplace, and the dashboard can be customized to show users the specific data they need to see. 

• Intelligent insights and alerts show you ongoing leasing opportunities, upcoming contract renewals, and new tenants.
• With one click, you can take action on your data: open the record, send an email, log a call, etc. Any action within Salesforce can be taken when the insight is uncovered by the dashboard. 
• Opportunity Management view details what stage you are in negotiating contract renewals and offers actionable guidance for success.

Say you’re dealing with a tenant who is unhappy with their space in your shopping center and wants to move to a new one. You can open the shopping center record with an interactive dashboard that shows an entire blueprint you can navigate in different ways. You can see the spaces currently available or with contracts ending soon. Filter by price or square footage range if the tenant is working within a specific budget or needs a certain sized space. And all of this can be accessed on a mobile device if you need to conduct business on site. 

Tenant Servicing and Self-Service

A robust but easy-to-use tenant portal is vital to maintaining positive relationships with tenants, providing a central touch point for service requests and a direct line of communication with case owners. Tenants can see notifications about different properties, and quickly schedule, track, and modify service requests. No more calling in to find out the status of a service request. You have visibility into your entire request history, just click through the record to get more information and interact directly with the case owner. 

It costs more for you to complete a service request than if the tenant can complete it themselves, which is why the tenant portal facilitates self-service. Curate articles that give tenants information on how to handle common service requests, so if they’re dealing with something like a water leak, they can take action right away. You can even set up your customer service page to automatically pull up related articles when tenants put in formal service requests, giving them one last opportunity to help themselves. 

The internal service view offers a full breakdown of an agent’s current cases, and they can find new requests via individual queues set up for different priority levels. The service team has access to the same articles as the tenants, modified to outline how to handle requests as they’re reported. Service agents also have visibility into larger account information, so if they have a customer with an upcoming contract renewal, they know to give this request extra attention to ensure satisfaction. 

Property Management and Field Service

Operating and maintaining your space shouldn’t be a headache, and Salesforce can improve property management by simplifying scheduling and dispatching while providing a comprehensive outline of the tenant’s service history. The dispatcher view in Salesforce provides a rich Gantt chart with an overview of all your technicians, both internal and external, and what their schedule for the day looks like. Need to move an assignment around? Simply drag and drop to where it needs to go and all associated parties will be automatically notified of the change. 

The field service mobile app contains a full calendar as well as an interactive map with route optimization, helping technicians get to their destination as quickly as possible with real-time traffic updates. If they need to reschedule, they can do that directly within the app, which will automatically contact the client. Salesforce has a complete record of the asset’s past service history, and you can drill into each individual piece of work to see what the service was and who responded to it, helping field technicians gain more knowledge on the client before they engage. After the request is completed, the technician can generate the service report immediately, collect the client’s digital signature, and preview the PDF, all from the mobile app.  

Implement Salesforce to better serve tenants 

Communication is essential at every point of the customer journey, and Salesforce gives you tools to connect with customers on a deeper level. From educating them about the tenant experience at move-in to satisfying them at the critical touch points on the way to renewal, Salesforce provides actionable insights to help you meet each customer’s changing needs over the course of their relationship with your company. Find out how Silverline can help you implement commercial real estate technology and give your team a 360-degree view of tenants.