Technology is becoming more advanced every day across every industry. In the storage industry, we are even seeing almost completely automated and unmanned facilities! What does it look like to run an automated facility, though? What kind of challenges are there, and how does it differ from owning or managing a manned facility?
In this Spotlight, Victor Diaz and Chad Lundberg give us their views on what it's like to run an unmanned facility versus a manned facility.
Question: "What are the main differences between an automated or manned facility?"
Check out the video clip below to hear their answers:
In this Gabfocus Session: Get Smart, we spoke with Chad Lundberg of The Storage Group and Victor Diaz from Stor365. We took the opportunity to hear their suggestions on how to intelligently run a self storage business.
Check out the full Session to dive deeper!
Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what Victor and Chad had to say:
So I deal with both.
A lot of it is really keeping a pulse on who's doing what, who has the power to do what. For instance, my district manager, that's a different level that we have in there to keep making sure everyone is being audited. Exceptions reports are being cleared, there's nothing funky going on.
And I'll drive over to a site once a week just to check, try to at least have one day for myself to get the paperwork completed. But honestly, we do heavy audits once a week on three sites at minimum. I don't mind it personally.
As long as you have the right person, that's really what makes the difference. Especially in these class A facilities. You have to have somebody who's very sharp when you're talking about an eight to ten million dollar property. You have to make sure that that asset is protected. Have to make sure that person understands the legal laws and what's going on in your state, if there's any changes.
With automated, I've taken some from manned to automated. Sometimes you can take a hit on the customers wanting to talk to somebody. But you just forward the phone line to the next available site. You do have, in my opinion, quite a bit more control because you know what is going on or what can and cannot come through your facility when it's automated."
—Victor Diaz
"I tend to like the unmanned better because I feel there's more control. There's pros and cons to both, but I'm an 'unmanned' person."
—Chad Lundberg
