Unpacked Webinar: Automating Your Collections Process

00:00:04
Greg Sane: Hello everyone and thank you for joining us today. Today this is Storable’s Learning Lab series and my name is Greg Sane. I’m on the Solutions Architect team here at Storable. Today we will be going over automating your collections process and I will be introducing our speaker James Renauf here in just a moment. He’ll be driving this presentation. Throughout the presentation we do have a question section, a chat section. If you have any kind of question and you want James to be able to answer there will be time for that at the end, but throughout the process, throughout the presentation, feel free to put any kind of questions or additional information that you’d like to hear about in the chat. And yeah, without any further ado, I will go ahead and hand it over to Mr. James Renouf. Thanks, Greg. Can everybody hear me okay? Can you see my screen? Let me know in the chat. 00:01:25 James Renouf And yes, Laura, this is being recorded, so we will definitely give you the recording when we’re finished. And we have a ton of people coming on, so I’m very excited about that. We’re going to be over 100 in just a moment. So just while everybody’s coming in, I’d just like to know, where’s everybody coming from? Where are you located? I’d love to see that. 00:01:47 James Renouf So we have Columbus, Ohio, Detroit, New York, Montana, Texas, Illinois, Oregon, Louisiana, Maryland, so we have South Africa, and we have Canada, so we are all over the world, which is very exciting for this presentation. So thank you everyone, and there’s others putting in their locations, so thank you everyone for being on here, and like Greg said, this is what we call our storable learning lab.

00:02:19
James Renouf: Now, this has been, and this, I believe, is our fourth presentation that we’ve done with what we call the Learning Lab Series, where we really like to basically peel the layers, go a little deeper with storable products, and talk about different options and functionality, where hopefully you can come away from this particular presentation and all of our presentations with some actionable items. So, that’s the goal, and let’s dive in. I’m gonna keep this hopefully to around maybe half an hour and I will ask for a little participation throughout because I wanna hear some of the things that you’re doing, especially when it comes to collections. So I’ll ask for that throughout the presentation. So thank you again for being here and let’s go through it. So I’m gonna be talking about the impact of delinquency on your business, the advantages of focusing on it and using automation along with the fact that potential changes can equal results. So when it comes to delinquency or anything in your

00:03:25
James Renouf: management software, sometimes it’s just – it’s not that you have to overhaul everything, and that’s the first thing that I want to get across in this presentation. It’s not that I’m saying you need to change every part of your collection process. No, what I am saying is that you have the opportunity to look at different aspects of it, along with any part of your business, to potentially make some small changes. I had a former coworker at Storable that he said, basically, if you could do 1 % or 2 % better here, and then 1 % or 2 % better there, all those little 1 % or 2 % changes and increases, they add up over time. It doesn’t have to be a monumental thing, but making those small changes absolutely can make a huge difference. So the goal of this presentation is to talk about storage collections in general, give you options to increase your collections on delinquent accounts, and create more revenue with less effort because obviously with self -storage, a big goal is to profit, to have

00:04:31
James Renouf: revenue. And especially with seemingly uncertain times, it’s not like it necessarily was a couple years ago with self -storage where everyone was, not everyone, but a lot of people may have been at 95 % occupancy and everything’s going extremely well, there may be opportunity now that we’re looking for revenue where we can get it, and one of those areas that may be low -hanging fruit is your collections.

00:05:05
James Renouf: So most importantly, there are options, and we’re going to talk about some of those options, and throughout this presentation, I used AI to make images, so I hope you like some of these images, and so this is our first of our many AI images of the person pointing, saying that, again, we have options when it comes to collections and when we’re with storable.

00:05:31
James Renouf: So delinquency for most managers is not fun. Does anyone on the call actually find the collection process or pass -through process fun, enjoyable? I’m assuming most people would say no. There’s always going to be one out there that says they love collections, but I’m assuming most people would say no. So there’s our self -storage manager, and he, in this case, is not having a great time. So I’m seeing some of the comments, heck no, from Laura, among other comments. So I think it’s fair to say that for most people, collections would not be a quote -unquote fun process. Some people are saying not terrible.

00:06:13
James Renouf: So is your delinquency process quote -unquote stuck?

00:06:21
James Renouf: And I want to ask people here, when was the last time that you reviewed or updated your past due process? process. Has it been the case that for many of you on the call, it may be that it’s been kind of status quo for your past due process? Have you been doing the same past due process for a long time? I’d like to get your feedback on that

00:06:46
James Renouf: Let me know. So some people saying a few years, is that pretty typical? Are you same old routine? What else? I’d like to get couple more comments.

00:07:02
James Renouf: And so the so same process for years for the most part. So the majority the majority of people that are responding are saying that their past due process has been the same. So that tells me from the feedback that I’m seeing that there is potential to improve. So this might be the time this this presentation may be something that maybe lights a spark that maybe we could improve some of that process.

00:07:29
James Renouf: So let’s stop chasing late payments. I saw this quote somewhere that said operators spend more time on collections than any other task. Now obviously as a manager or a person working in self -storage, you want to spend most of your time trying to bring in more revenue. You don’t necessarily want to be that person that’s trying to go and collect money that’s already due to you.

00:08:04
James Renouf: So the importance of efficient collections. Efficient collections are the self -storage industry’s lifeblood. It ensures financial stability, customer satisfaction, growth, and reduces risks. A well -structured process is critical for success in this new competitive field. and this can be a quote -unquote new source of income. So again, obviously, if someone rents with you, you’re due that income. But if we start to take more of a focus on collections, along with other parts of our business, we could see, and should see, our bottom line increase if we’re having a better process with it.

00:08:48
James Renouf: So there’s my AI version of what a happy self -storage manager looks like. They have a lot of television screens. So what are some of the common industry practices for collections? Well, most of you would have some sort of schedule where you’re locking someone out of the gate, you have late fees, you have a series of notices, a series of fees that ultimately can take you up to an auction, and you probably have different payment options.

00:09:23 James Renouf There could be the threat of an auction. You may actually be auctioning people off or maybe you come from the standpoint that the last thing you want to do is to have an auction. You have different ways of communicating. So some of those are email, text, phone calls, SMS or text messages, mail service, snail mail, and you should be documenting that entire process. So what is your collection process? Does what I just mentioned earlier, does that sound similar to what you do? And more importantly, is that being followed and tracked? And that is super important. That whatever process you have, are you actually literally doing that process when it needs to happen? And I’d like to ask you or ask everyone here, what are some of the challenges that you’re facing with your past due process? If I could get a couple of comments as to what are some of the challenges that you’re experiencing.

00:10:37 James Renouf And Linda says, yes, they’re documenting everything. Chuck says the contact information may not be valid and no responses, that’s a big one.

00:10:52 James Renouf Following the law to the T and timing, Robert says I want it to be automated. Roseanne says time, it takes a lot of time to follow these collection processes. Laura says ghosting, people aren’t getting back to her. When tenants do not update their contact information. Excuses why they need to pay later. Tenants knowing they’re doing a certain date and they’re not figuring out how to manage that. And getting customers to follow up on making payments, not just giving a date. These are all awesome, not awesome that you’re having that, but awesome comments because I think these all get to the core of some of the true issues that you’re experiencing. So thank you for all that.

00:11:42 James Renouf So here’s an image that’s sometimes people feel a little overwhelmed, and this is maybe how they think their past due process is, that we do this and we do that, and it seems a little bit overwhelming as to what’s going on with their past dues, so how can we make it easier, how can we make it more efficient, and then how can we make it that, in the end, we’re getting more revenue? you. So is it possible that you’re not necessarily 100 % optimal with your past years? Could it be that maybe your tenants are frustrated with the process? And are you potentially leaving money on the table?

00:12:26 James Renouf So for this call, we have people from, so this is storable, obviously, and the majority, if not all of of the people that are on this phone call are probably coming from either SiteLink or Storage. Let me know if you’re coming from another one of the storable management software platforms. But the majority of you should be coming from SiteLink or Storage, so that when I’m going through this presentation and I’m talking about some actionable items that you can have, I did my best to show screenshots from both SiteLink Storage. So for this conversation, it doesn’t matter which particular facility management software you’re coming from. My goal is to show it with both management software programs. So first of all, you should, in my opinion, evaluate what in fact are your past due amounts.

00:13:21 James Renouf I can’t tell you over the years how many people that I’ve talked to that – and everyone’s different, of course, and some people have a better process than others. But I can tell you from experience that for some operators that I’ve talked to, they may not be focusing on the true numbers as to what is owed to them. So in this particular screenshot, I have a screenshot from SiteLink, the SiteLink Management Summary Report, and in this demo, they’re only owed $38. What I would say that you’re doing a pretty good process if you only have one unit that owes us $38 and they’re zero to 10 days past due. But take a look at that. Take a look at those numbers. The same thing if I go to the next slide here, and this is coming from the management summary of storage, similar look, similar feel where I’m seeing the buckets of days that people are past due. Again, this is demo data, so I happen to have units that may just all happen to be 120 days old, but I think that’s all important. Number one is to

00:14:30 James Renouf recognize what is your situation? Now, anyone that owes you money, of course, we wanna get that, but are the majority of your tenants in the zero to 10 range? Do we have a lot that for whatever reason are over 30 days? Is that something to be focusing on? Because now it’s been a month and for obvious reasons, we don’t want people to be late over a longer period. So number one, that would be one thing that I would suggest where some people on the call is let’s take a hard look at what is truly owed to us to to to firmly understand the situation because some people with might say yes our past due process works our past due process doesn’t really need to be improved but then when you look at the actual numbers you recognize there’s that there’s X dollars probably to the tune of thousands of dollars that we could be collecting so that would be number one the first step that I would do as a manager, as a company. And the trend is your friend. So if you look at a report, for example, InsightLink,

00:15:36 James Renouf like a management history report that gives a 13 -month breakdown, or if you look at your reports in general, or whatever management software you’re on, is your past due process staying the same? Is it going up? Are we making steps that over the months has been going down? look at that trend again to know exactly where you are in your situation. If it’s going up, well, then absolutely, and even if it’s the same, there is an opportunity for us to get some of that income. 00:16:11 James Renouf So, why don’t people pay? Well, number one, they forget, and I put that in quotes. Some people might laugh when I say they forget, but they forget. they don’t have the money, or the perception is that they don’t have the money, or their self -storage bill isn’t their top priority. So if they’re going to pay, maybe they’re going to pay their rent before they pay their self -storage bill. And that’s not to say that that is or shouldn’t be the case, but my point is that, is it that simple? Is it that simple that they simply forget to pay, or that they don’t have the money? Either Another way, it’s good to understand that. So do you feel like this sometimes where it seems, I saw someone post ghosting earlier where you’re calling out to your customers and maybe they’re seeing that self -storage phone number and they’re pushing decline on their phone, if it feels like that. And I’ve had some numerous conversations with people over the years where it’s quite comical where they say, I could never

00:17:18 James Renouf get in touch with this past lieutenant, and then they had a situation where they auctioned off their unit, and they actually had more money come in. They had auction proceeds, and they had money that they had to give to the customer. And all of a sudden, when they left a message to the customer that they had money to give to them, all of a sudden, they were able to get in touch with that customer very quickly. I’m sure some of you have had that experience.

00:17:43 James Renouf So sometimes it feels like you’re on a scooter and you’re in your self -storage facility and you’re just riding around. You know the money’s there and you’re trying to collect it. But sometimes it feels like you’re on a hamster wheel. You’re trying your best, but you’re just not getting there. So could collections become, and Roseanne says very true, could collections become fun? I don’t know if I want to go so far as saying that, but it may become a better experience for you. That potential is there. So, what are our opportunities? And like I said earlier, small changes can absolutely add up to become positive ROI, measurable results.

00:18:31 James Renouf Definitely, there are opportunities for improvement, in my opinion, no matter what your situation is. So, number one, leveraging technology, and Storwa is the technology leader, is a big part of that. Having people on auto payments, and I’m going to go through specifics of this in a moment. Streamlining your communication and automating paths, automating reminders.

00:18:57 James Renouf So, in my opinion, it all starts with your management software, and you should unlock tools that you already have. So, for years, when I’ve done in certain sessions with people or at a trade show, different events we’ve had, a lot of times, our customers, no fault of their own, don’t necessarily know about some of the options that they have. And we need to do a better job of letting our customers know about the great options that they already have, and having a conversation like this is one of those ways. So you don’t know what you don’t know. And it is possible that there are features, There are options that you’re not using, and you just didn’t necessarily know that that could be helpful. So let’s talk about some of those things. Number one, this may be obvious to some, but really, truly focusing on your reminder screen or the task list in storage. So this is site link with the reminder screen, and this is storage with the task list. So if I was looking at a reminder screen like this,

00:20:06 James Renouf and this is a demo, this is not your typical situation, but there’s been numerous times where I’ve been talking to someone and I look at the reminder screen and it’s obvious to me that we could do a better job of tackling our reminders. So regardless of what your past due process is, your delinquency stages are, regardless of whether or not we’re making changes to it, are we in fact being diligent about going after those reminders that we ourselves have already set up. So your goal is to, as much as possible, or the manager’s goal, as much as possible, is to make this reminder screen as close to zero as possible. If we’re supposed to send a notice on day three, are we in fact sending that notice? Are we in fact sending that text, et cetera, when we are supposed to do that? That would be one, after understanding the situation that you’re in with your collections, without making any changes at all, Are we on top of processing our past due schedule at delinquency stages? If we’re not, let’s

00:21:11 James Renouf change that and that in and of itself may have some measurable results.

00:21:22 James Renouf Are we invoicing ahead of time? And it seems to me like over the years, I’m seeing less and less people that are invoicing. Now, part of that reason could be the fact that they were sending literal pieces of mail for invoices in the past. And that makes sense that you may not necessarily want to invoice for that reason because of the postage or time and other things. but why not invoice someone, at least with an email? Why not do that? I don’t personally see the harm in that. Again, it’s not that there’s a one -stop shop in this presentation that you need to do this particular action, or you need to do number one versus number two, et cetera. But these are some items that I wanna put in front of you for you to make the decision of, well, maybe we try that, maybe we don’t. But for me, if I can let them know ahead of time that they’re due, I don’t see personally any negative in that. Now, again, some people might say, well, they know when they’re due. They don’t need to be reminded. They

00:22:29 James Renouf know that they’re due on the first of the month. That is very true. But if one of the reasons are they simply forget for whatever reason, why not let them know ahead of time? Before they even get past due, let’s let them know before that point happens. And with Sitelink and with Storage, we can automatically send those invoices by email. So with Sitelink – with Storage, that’s an option. And again, with Sitelink here, if you go into our setup, there’s an option to process invoices. It’s called batch processing, and you can do that. I also wanted to reiterate that with any of these items that I’m talking about today, please do take advantage of our support, which is something that you’re paying for monthly because they can help you with these specific settings. If you’re wondering, well, where exactly is that? Where do I change that? Reach out to our support. We have a whole team of people to help you make, at least let you know where a particular setting could happen. Also, I wanted to

00:23:29 James Renouf let you know about the fact that we’re having bi -weekly Q &A webinars. So Greg, who was on the call earlier, he does a storage Q &A webinar. You may or may not have been on that. and myself, I handle the site link Q &A webinar, which is a great platform, just like this here, where it’s not so much a formal presentation as it is a way for you to ask questions on the fly. So there’s a lot of people in there, a lot of great questions, and sometimes it’s awesome to be able to ask your question, but another time it’s nice to hear questions that other people are facing, and you may not even necessarily be thinking about what they’re doing, and then, oh, there’s an epiphany that this is what they’re tackling, and maybe we can do the same thing. So, take advantage of that, the Q &A webinars. So, let’s streamline our communication. So, Laura says, the biweekly Q &A yesterday was great. So, we can use email, text, phone calls, snail mail. Can we spend less money and be more effective? So, going

00:24:35 James Renouf back to what was mentioned earlier with the fact that the majority of people that are on this call tend to have been status quo with their past due process, I have talked to so many people that at least in terms of texting, they are getting better results with texting than they are with sending snail mail. Now I’m not saying that you should stop sending letters, but my point is that if you are analyzing your past due process and you’re sending text messages and you’re getting let’s say 90 -95 % open rate. You’re getting people to go to your website to make payments online. For a lot of owners, a lot of facilities, at least initially in the past due process, a lot of owners are getting rid of printed notices early on to save a considerable amount of money because texting is either going to be free with storage or a nominal cost with sitelink. And then later on, if we get closer to an auction, they may start sending those notices. But Think about that. Say to yourself, well, how many notices

00:25:42 James Renouf are we actually printing? And we have our postage. We have our envelopes. We have the time that it takes to put those together. And a lot of people don’t factor their time into it, but let’s just say it’s a dollar to send each piece of mail, and we’re sending out 100 pieces of mail. Well, gosh, that’s $100 a month that potentially could be saved with sending a past due notice, or excuse me, by sending a text message. So that is a measurable result right there that you could be getting potentially better results, especially if you’re not sending text messages, and then saving money. So you’re getting more money from the revenue you’re collecting from collections, and then spending less. That’s a specific example of how you’re getting positives on both sides. So let’s streamline our communication. Email. I don’t see any harm in emailing, and someone posted earlier in the comments that they may not necessarily have an email. So have you required emails on move -in? If you haven’t, should you?

00:26:48 James Renouf Sometimes I’ll talk to people and they say, well, in my specific community we’re different and people don’t have email addresses. Well, I really don’t know anyone anymore that doesn’t have an email. That may not be the case, and maybe you make an exception for a particular person, but to me, I think the majority of people are going to have an email address. Why not send one? Why not require one or consider requiring one so that, again, that is one way that we can interact with people. Are you texting? Let me ask you, how many people on the call are texting? while I’m going through this. So I’m seeing yes, yes. Let’s put it this way, yes is with exclamation marks. I personally have not seen anyone that was trepidatious about texting, that went to texting, that then all of a sudden stopped doing it. I don’t know one customer that stopped doing it. So for me, again, no cost for storage as part of your subscription plan with SiteLink, it’s under a penny a text. And Robert says, love it, it

00:28:05 James Renouf is the best to text with a payment link, extremely important. So Honey Lynn says she’s interested. So like I mentioned earlier, some are replacing snail mail, at least earlier on the past due process with texting. Texting to me is one of the most valuable ways to communicate with your past due tenants. You should, in my opinion, send email, but we’re lucky if we get 20 % of people opening up their email. We’re going to get 90 -95 % opening up their text. Why is that? It’s still communicating with a person, but for where we are right now, a lot of people just don’t deem emails to be as important as if you have that ding on your phone. So if you’re like me, you probably have your phone on you within a couple of feet, and there’s just there is just a sense of urgency when you get that text message. So if you are not using text message, I would really strongly consider it. Phone calls. Are you diligent about making those phone calls? I would take a guess that a lot of people on this call, this

00:29:20 James Renouf webinar, probably don’t like making phone calls. But with that being said, are you diligent about doing it? Are you systematic? It’s very important. Snail mail, are you still mailing? Is it less often? Again, let’s look at our process and consider what are we doing, what potentially could we improve on, what potentially could we change? So the happiest self -storage operators that I personally have met or talked to are extremely bullish on auto payments, extremely bullish on auto payments. I’m not saying that you need to do this but again the happiest customers that I’ve met they force or require every single new customer to be on auto bill. If you have people on auto bill for obvious reasons you’re going to have less people that are late and they’re going to stay longer. So I’m not saying or suggesting that you have to have everyone on auto bill but at a minimum I would strongly suggest that you should really be pushing that. And if someone is late, that’s your great opportunity by text

00:30:27 James Renouf or email, letting them know something to the effect of you were late. By the way, if you are an auto bill, you would not have been late going forward. So if you can, the more people you can have on auto payments, the more revenue you’re going to have, the longer people are going to stay. And then the happier you’re going to be and the happier your customer is going to be.

00:30:48 James Renouf So customers stay longer, they’re less delinquent, you’re going to get more revenue. And this is one that a lot of people don’t necessarily focus on is the valuation of your facility. So if you have X amount of units rented at X amount of rates and they’re paying on time, the valuation, it’s not just the money coming in every month, it’s the valuation of your facility as a whole. So obviously if people are staying longer, we have more units that are rented to then increase that valuation and that can be substantial.

00:31:21 James Renouf With auto payments, this is a big one. A lot of times with past dues, people tend to focus, as they should, when someone’s credit card expires. How about being proactive and reaching out to your customers before their credit card expires? And we can do that with site link with the CRM event expiring credit card notice. And you can also do that setting in storage that you can reach out to them before, excuse me, storage will do that automatically on the task list will show you before their credit card expires. So now it’s not you’re late and you owe us money. It’s just by the way, your credit card is about to expire. Let’s take care of it so that you don’t become late.

00:32:09 James Renouf Consider taking ACH payments, which can also be on auto bill. That in and of itself is more recurring revenue with less fees than with credit cards. So if you’re not taking ACH, maybe we should do that.

00:32:26 James Renouf And this was the ACH with sitelink and this is ACH with storage.

00:32:33 James Renouf Potentially allowing people to pay later. So, if you have the situation, well, first of all, you could potentially, or you can, change their billing date. Now, you might be a facility that, no, everyone is on the first of the month, or they’re on this date, and it’s not going to change. Well, you do have the option in both SiteLink and Storage to prorate or change their date to a new date. But I really like the fact that we have a feature in both programs where you can allow them to pay later. In other words, if they’re due on the first of the month, and they tell you, well, maybe maybe I’m a senior citizen and I get my check on the third of the month. I understand and I know that I’m due on the first, but is it okay if I pay on the third? Again, they’re still charged on the first. If they’re due $100 a month, they’re charged on the first, but you could set it up in both programs, site, link, and storage, to literally charge their credit card on the third. Therefore, an important point

00:33:31 James Renouf with this is if you’re going to charge them later, make sure that that charge date is going to be less or before when their late fee is going to go on their account. So if we did that, if they were due in the first and we charged them on the third, the customer’s happy because they have the actual money. They’re not going to be late. That is an option that you could give to some customers.

00:33:57 James Renouf Potentially limit credits. How many people have had awkward situations where maybe you are a quote -unquote nice person, you’re a manager, and the person comes in and they have a story. There’s some kind of extenuating circumstance that they couldn’t pay their rent month one. So you waive their late fee. Well, month two comes along, they may or may not have an extenuating circumstance, but hey, you credited my late fee last month. Why won’t you credit it this month? now there’s that potential conflict that you’re just a terrible person in the eyes of the customer that you won’t weigh their late fee. So with SiteLink and with storage, there are options where you can limit credits. So it’s not that it’s your fault that you wouldn’t credit the late fee, it’s that the system won’t let you. So for some people, that really is a great option to have So you go in site link in program defaults for credits. You could limit first of all

00:35:04 James Renouf How much credits you could give for a given period let’s say you have five I’m just an arbitrary number here $500 in credits for a month or you get to have a maximum allowed credits per ledger So if your late fee was $10 You could put it as 20 meaning that you could credit to late fees and then there was no more credits available same thing with storage you could have credits limited per user, per manager, or X amount of credits per month. So think about that, or try that. This is an important one, and I saw this a couple of times in the comments. Have a link to your website in your text, messages, and email. So absolutely, where you can. Let them know where they can go to pay online. So now you’re technically open 24 hours a day for them to pay.

00:35:55 James Renouf So then they’re going on their mobile phone, and here they are to make their payment. And if you don’t have a website, and Storable has Storable websites that you can integrate with, you can still have a way for your customers to pay online. So with Sitelink, we have what’s called the web template. The web template will allow you to have a link that’s generated by Sitelink that you can put in a text message, you put in your emails that they could pay online, but it’s not technically on a website. It’s its own unique URL. And the same thing with storage, we have what’s called a rental center, and you can have a tenant portal where, again, they could pay online without you actually having a website. I’m a firm believer that having a website has a ton of value, move -ins, reservations, an online portal, having that there inherently, but if you are a customer that does not have a website, There are ways for your customers to pay online. Another one. This is probably a big one for many people.

00:36:59 James Renouf How many of you, and this always surprises me, how many of you, you tell your customers they can pay online, but they just say they have a hard time paying online. They just, for whatever reason, they can’t set up their account. They just have trouble doing it, or there’s a bunch of customers that don’t tell you they can’t get on.

00:37:19 Greg Sane and 00:37:19 James Renouf they just don’t pay online, you don’t even hear about it, I’m seeing a lot of yeses here. Well, you in SiteLink, you could proactively, if you have their email, just put in a web password for them and you’re creating an account. If you just have, if their email is testedhotmail .com and you put in a password, they’re now ready to go to pay online. You could proactively do that. Maybe you put in their gate code there. And then when you email or text your customers, by the way, you already have an account online, it’s just your email and your gate code and you’re there. And then that problem goes away. Same thing with storage. You could set up their account for them through the rental center. Yes, that’s time for you to have to do that, but once you do that, they’re good to go. There’s other options that potentially don’t allow customers to partially pay. Sometimes you get these situations where customers, for whatever reason, they feel like it’s, I don’t know if this is true with the healthcare

00:38:12 James Renouf industry, where some people believe that they pay anything, that somehow they’re good. The fact that they paid a third of their rent, they’re paying something means that it’s okay. Well, if you’re having that situation, you could disable partial payments or disable payments online, disable payments in general if they are so many days late. Because you might get to the point with a customer that you say, either pay it all off or we don’t necessarily want to have you as a customer because we want to have somebody come in that we’ll pay.

00:38:46 James Renouf Now, another big part, or something I really am excited personally about, is with storable. As you know, storable has many different parts and components. And for site -linked storage, for example, we used to be competitors. We used to be different companies. And now we’re part of the larger storable umbrella. Well, very recently, now call potential is part of storable. And the great thing about call potential is there’s a lot of truly automated features. So they have several different products that are listed here, but the one I just wanted to focus on at the end of this presentation was Collection Manager. I’m really excited about it. And it’s fully integrated with SiteLink and Storage. And so some of the highlights that I’m seeing with Collection Manager is that on average operators who are using it are collecting four times more. They’re saving four to seven hours a week per store. They’re experiencing 63 % less units going to auction. And on average, this was prior to COVID, they were

00:39:48 James Renouf getting five new auto pay signups per month. Now it’s more than that. And they’re reducing payment related calls by 30%. One thing that I found super interesting with CallPotential is that according to their metrics, roughly 50 % of customers prefer to pay by phone. They prefer to have an automated phone call go to them and then they pay. So they don’t have to talk to a manager. So that is, it was extremely eye opening to me. So just like with site link with a past due schedule, and just like with storage that we, so I think we have past due events and storage, we have delinquency stages, they have what they call workflows. So it’s just set up that it says day one, you’re supposed to email. Um, let’s just say email on day one, text on this day. And they have their own specific metrics that have worked really well for them. But you can fully customize it, what’s going to happen when, for email, text, and these auto -generated phone calls.

00:40:53 James Renouf And there’s a lot to it in the sense that customers can check their balance from phone calls. This is one that I really like. They add the option, if you have it set up this way, to pay for the opportunity to talk to a manager. In other words, a big request that I get from a lot of our customers is with convenience fees. And there’s different ways to look at that. But one thing that was interesting to me in my conversations with call potential is that a lot of operators are using these automated calls that the convenience fee, although that is more revenue that you could be receiving, is a deterrent for a lot of people to call the store. That way, if you want to talk to a manager, okay that’ll be $5 or in New York it could be $10 or $20 so yes you could have more more revenue or you could be customers learn or you’re telling them ahead of time here’s our past due process and by the way you could be getting a phone call from us and then they know the options to to click to to or or to to

00:42:00 James Renouf touch with the phone to make that payment now here’s the real if you want to call it killer app in my opinion with call potential going back to what I was saying where you could absolutely put a link in an email or in a text, there’s still going to be those set of customers that they have trouble with that. What Call Potential has is what they call a unique payment link. There is no need to sign up. So the fact that they’re integrated with SiteLink and Storage through an API, they can send a link. They know that that customer’s late and all they have to do is touch that link and without them even just having to set up an account online, they can pay. So, that in and of itself is going to get more people to pay. To me, that is extremely huge. Auto pay numbers are going to go up. Also, very, very useful when switching to a new facility management software. So, for whatever reason you wanted to go from sitelink to storage or any of the platforms within the storable family or sitelink to storage,

00:43:02 James Renouf storage to sitelink, maybe you’re a management company and you only use one particular platform. Whatever the reason is, it’s obviously when you have people in AutoPay, you want to keep them on AutoPay. And if you switch to another management software, it can be a lot to try and go after those credit cards again. If you’re switching to another platform or coming from another platform, well, you could use that no payment link to just let them know we’ve switched to another facility management software program. Just go in here to set yourself up on AutoPay without them having to set up an account. So, this is what it would look like, very easy for them to go on autopay from that no sign -up link. So, in my opinion, and hopefully I’ve given some insight on this call today, there is a better collection process that’s possible. And my goal here, again, was to give you some specifics that you could think about, and And hopefully that results in some positive numbers for you. So I want to open

00:44:07 James Renouf this up really quickly for everyone. What are some of the ways that you’re seeing results? Is there something that maybe you’re doing that I haven’t mentioned? Is there something that you’ve done recently that’s really helped you? If there’s any comments that you could make, I’d love to see that or hear that. So Amber says she likes learning about Collection Manager. So if you have any comments on your specific past due process that works for you, let me know. So any comments or questions before we finish today?

00:44:48 James Renouf So I’m seeing a lot of people asking how much is the add -on for Collection Manager. Tons of those comments. So it’s based on your similar to what you have with site link and storage where it’s based on the amount of units you have. So we can, if you’re interested in that if you’re interested in collection manager. If you want to write tell me more or any any comment like that we can we can certainly reach out to you and talk to you about it but I personally been very excited about call potential, not only in its current form but the fact that when it’s part of greater storable family. There’s a lot of new options that will be coming down the line. Chuck says, thank you for your presentation.

00:45:32 James Renouf Thank you for everyone writing, tell me more, all those comments. Robert said, very exciting about automating it all. So again, there’s a lot in this presentation. I know it’s only 45 minutes, but there’s a lot that we talked about, a lot of quick slides there. but again, the point is recognize where you are for good or for bad with your collections. Know that regardless of where you are, there is the potential to do better. There are actionable items that you can do within both site link and storage to see results. Measure those. Can we save costs potentially with less mailing? Could we have more people know, or engage with us by sending text messages, for example, should we send our text message earlier in the process, all of these things, start to look at it from a 30 foot view, and then start to analyze it, you know, we bumped our text message up, we sent a text message now on day one, and we’re seeing more payments come in. We set up people’s accounts for them online and we’re getting

00:46:46 James Renouf less of those calls happening. We moved to collection manager, now everything is automated for us, it just does it. Think about those process, think about those steps and know that there absolutely is a way to get more revenue with less time, less stress and have a better experience overall. So thank you everyone for attending today. I really appreciate it. If you have any questions, you can reach out to us at SalesSolutionsAtStorable .com. Thank you so much for attending the learning labs and we’re gonna continue to have these monthly. And if you like this, we appreciate it and we will see you next time. Have a great day.