Automation and contactless rental options have been hot topics in the last couple of years. Have you moved to an automated, remote management style for your facilities? Are you curious if you should be considering it?
In this Gabfocus Spotlight, we hear from Guy Middlebrooks (CubeSmart) about facility automation and their views on the topic!
Question: "How automated should your facilities and rental processes be?"
Check out the video clip below to hear their answers:
In this Gabfocus Session: Lessons from Large Operators, we hear from Right Move's Darren Kelley and CubeSmart's Guy Middlebrooks. They took the time to sit down with Tommy to talk about what small operators can learn from the industry's largest players.
Check out the full Session to dive deeper!
Don't want to watch the clip? Here's what Guy had to say:
When you think about smart rental or online rental, contactless rental, we are up to about 38%, maybe 39% of our new rentals every month go through that smart rental process, and they never have to go in and speak to the manager. And they're able to get to their space and be able to get into it. And there's a welcome bag in the unit waiting right there for them.
And a few years ago, that number was zero. So that's pretty impressive.
We've heard different numbers from different companies. And as we think about automation, or unmanned facilities, or hybrid, we actually spent a few bucks and did a pretty massive customer focus group project several months ago. Where this outside vendor that does focus groups as a specialty. And they interviewed existing CubeSmart customers, previous or past CubeSmart customers, other company customers, Extra Space, Public, any of the others.
Well, ultimately the results that came back out of the focus group were very interesting.
One third of the folks that they talked to said "we love technology. We don't want to speak to anyone, we don't want to have any personal contact. We will absolutely rent a storage unit online and go to the unit, move in and out and never speak with anyone."
Another third said, "we will use technology. We're happy to use it, but it better work and it better work really well, because if it doesn't, you better be there for me quickly."
The other third said "we don't want to use it, we want to talk to someone. We want a real life in person interaction.
So it's really interesting.
—Guy Middlebrooks
