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Welcome to the Self Storage Lab — where we deconstruct how operators are adapting to today’s technology-driven landscape and how it might impact your business.

Hoping to stand out in this competitive landscape and focus inwardly on improving operational efficiency, operators are looking to the integration of innovative technology and the inclusion of customer-centric amenities within their facilities.

Today’s episode will be part 2 of 3, where we'll touch on the state of technology being utilized today throughout the industry. We start by breaking down the different tools available to operators, big and small, to help run their day-to day, plus how automaton can make you a better operator.  

Mentioned in this episode

Intro to Technology

We asked ourselves the following questions.

• What issues were operators trying to solve this year? / What was top of mind this year?
• What to look forward in the coming year?

Online Presence Breakdown

The rise of digital marketing has created different touch-points for customers to engage with your brand. Prospects are now further down the marketing funnel when they eventually talk to your store team. They will have already visited your website, read some reviews, and perhaps browsed through your rates. You have to ensure you can service prospects and tenants wherever they are.  

• Website as digital Storefront
• Mobile is king — data from (slide 15)
• 65% mobile and 35% desktop (slide 15)
• Potential v. Tenant chats (slide 18)
• Omnichannel as a unified experience
• Multi channel v. Omnichannel
• Customer Preference Data Trends (slide 17)
• Why Online Reputation matters (slide 20)
• Social Media as a channel
• This also means you need to update your Listings (slide 22)
• QR Codes: Merging the physical and digital experience (slide 23)

Back of Office Breakdown

The back of office tech stack is the core of running and operating your self storage operations. These tools help an operator easily manage, monitor, and run their stores and their teams. These directly impact operations, revenue, and tenant management and support measures.

• FMS: The central hub for your business (slide 26)
• The Modern Call Center; aka Contact Center
• The ability to support multiple contact channels
• AI in the contact center (slide 28)
• Top Issues from Tenants
• swivl Escalation Data
• Value Based Pricing v. Dynamic Pricing
• Overview of top Payment Options

Facility Operations Breakdown

Over the last year there’s been a big push on this front. We’ve seen a lot of good stuff at trade shows related to state of the art hardware and software tools. These tools are helping operators streamline facility operations by helping to reduce operating costs and drive a renewed focus on their IN-STORE customer experience.

• Smart locks, IoT, bluetoth gates, Cameras, etc
• Kiosks
• Access Control
• Unattended Facilities

If you haven’t already, go download the second edition of our industry report “The State of Technology in Self Storage”. We cover a ton of data points focused on how operators should think about putting The Modern Customer at the center of their universe.

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We also unpack over 2 million conversations with customers in the past year. We think you’ll really like it.

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Stay tuned for Part III where we explore the entirety of swivl’s conversational data trends and how AI is impacting Self Storage today.

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