WTF residents do on a resident app is probably not a question that’s been keeping you up at night. But as resident engagement app providers, the Flamingo team is obsessed with this question, and it definitely keeps every…single…Flamingo team member up at night…or maybe it’s just me as the Founder and Head of Product Development.
But if you’re reading this – you’re probably wondering or have previously wondered WTF do residents use a resident app for?
Maybe you’re a Flamingo customer that has already implemented a resident app and wondering what your residents do on your Flamingo resident app – if that’s the case, login to your Flamingo dashboard and you’ll be able to see all the data on how your residents are using your resident app.
Or maybe you’re on the market to implement or build a resident experience and engagement app and wondering what features you need.
Or maybe you keep hearing your comps are implementing resident engagement and experience apps and wondering why they are doing this or what exactly a resident engagement and experience app is.
No matter your reason, we gotcha.
Flamingo’s resident experience and engagement platform is used in over 400,000 apartment units by apartment owners and operators looking to offer the best-in-class resident experience and engagement. So we’re in a good position to answer what residents use a resident engagement and experience app for.
We dug into Flamingo’s data and found some super interesting insights on how residents use their Flamingo resident app.
How We Assembled the Data on How Residents Use their Resident Engagement & Experience App
As a modern resident app and resident engagement tech platform, we implemented a variety of 3rd party tools and native features within Flamingo’s resident apps to track every user action right from the beginning. This wasn’t done to be creepy but rather to ensure we can build the best resident app based on exactly what residents need.
This data allows us (and you) to:
- Understand what residents are doing versus what we think they’d do with the resident app.
- Measure how changes and new features impact resident app engagement – whether positively or negatively.
- Quickly catch bugs or issues users might be experiencing on the resident app but don’t bother to report.
- Improve conversion events, which are specific actions you want residents to take on the resident app – e.g. increasing the number of residents that complete a survey, renew early, or even find info on the app instead of reaching out to the site team and interrupting their day.
So the data is pretty useful and helps us create a better resident app experience for all involved.
Let’s define each of the actions that we capture that residents do on their resident engagement app
A resident engagement app allows residents to do everything from one place. So rather than forcing residents to download a million different apps, innovative apartment owners and operators are implementing resident apps to create a better and more streamlined resident experience.
Here are the core things we found residents doing on their resident app:
- Amenity Reservation: When a resident reserves any physical object – e.g. freight elevator, amenity space, guest suite, or in the case of a Miami client – Kayaks.
- Completing Move-In Checklist Task: Flamingo’s platform automates the move-in process so it’s no longer manually coordinated over email. With this self-service process, residents simply upload documents, link accounts, complete forms etc. all on the app and get automated reminders if they fail to complete a task on time – e.g. like their move-in inspection.
- Completing Renewal Checklist Task: Same as above but for renewal tasks.
- Completing Move-Out Checklist Task: Same as above but for move-out tasks.
- Completing Resident Surveys: Flamingo’s platform surveys residents at each point along their resident journey including after Move-In, after maintenance requests, after event attendance, after amenity reservations, after staff interactions, once a month to measure overall satisfaction, once a month to measure renewal intent, after move-out etc. Residents also earn rewards for completing surveys.
- Digital Bulletin Engagement: This is when a resident creates a new social post, likes someone else’s post, or comments on another resident’s post.
- Digital Bulletin Views / Knowledge Base Access: This is when a resident browses the digital bulletin board to view posts from their neighbors.
- Getting Renter’s Insurance: Residents are able to use their Flamingo resident engagement app to obtain renter’s insurance, automatically verify an existing policy, and link it for ongoing automated monitoring so it’s also automatically uploaded to Yardi or Entrata via Flamingo’s property management system integrations.
- Key Release for Guests / Visitor Management: Residents are able to use their Flamingo resident app to designate any guests that can get access to their unit or be sent up to their unit – e.g. their house cleaner or significant other.
- Maintenance Requests: This is when a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to submit a work order or review the status of any previously submitted maintenance requests.
- Messaging Management: Residents can use their Flamingo resident engagement app to email management, text, live chat with management, or submit a ticket. Management is able to manage all these from a central location rather than managing resident issues via email.
- Mobile Key or Intercom: Flamingo integrates with dozens of systems including mobile key systems like Keymo or Dormakaba. This tracks whenever a resident uses their mobile key on their Flamingo resident app or clicks on a deep-link to an intercom system like ButterflyMX.
- On-Demand Fitness Workout & Challenges: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident engagenent app to access Flamingo’s extensive library of 500+ on-demand fitness classes, wellness classes, or to sign up for a monthly fitness challenge or view the current leaderboard.
- Private Message to Neighbor: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to send a private message to one of their neighbors.
- Rent Payment: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to submit their rent payment or check their ledger.
- Resident Event RSVP: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to RSVP for upcoming resident events or manage their RSVPs.
- Resident Reward Activities: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to earn resident rewards for doing things like completing resident surveys, attending resident events, submitting pictures from events etc.
- Searching Digital Resident Guide: When a resident uses their resident app to find information in their digital resident guide. Examples of this include looking up wifi information, rent policy, office hours, appliance manuals, quiet hours etc.
- Service Booking: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to book concierge services like house cleaners, dog walkers, TV mounters, personal trainers, personal chefs etc. Flamingo has an extensive network of pre-screened service providers that residents can quickly book on demand.
- Upload Pictures from Resident Events: When a resident attends a resident event and then uploads pictures from the event. These pictures go to the marketing team to use on social media to show off engagement. Residents earn rewards for doing this.
- Viewing Local Events: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to view local events in their neighborhood or city. Flamingo automatically pools events happening locally and shows those within the resident app.
- Pet Registration & Management: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to register their pet. This data is included with the move-in tasks data.
- Vehicle Registration & Management: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to register their car. This data is included with the move-in tasks data.
- Marketplace Access: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to access building partners such as moving companies, furniture companies, Doordash, Lyft, Uber, etc.
- Local & National Perks & Discounts: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to access or redeem perks at the over 50,000+ Restaurants, 150,000+ Retailers, and 850,000+ travel providers thatFlamingo is partnered with.
- Marketplace Selling: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to sell furniture, plants, and other items to their neighbors.
- Communication Preferences: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident engagement app to update their account settings and other communication preferences.
- Lock-Out Assistance: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to request lock-out assistance.
- Package Notifications: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to receive or view their package notifications.
- Notifications from Management: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident app to view emails, push notifications, text messages, and other in-app messages from the management team. This data is included in the digital bulletin board engagement and views data.
- Resident-Initiated Events: When a resident uses the app to create their own resident events and invite their neighbors to those events. This data is included in the digital bulletin board engagement.
- Front Desk Instructions: When a resident uses their Flamingo resident engagement app to provide instructions for the front desk. This data is included in the key release and visitor management data.
- Resident Onboarding: When a resident uses the app to complete their onboarding. This data is included in the move-in data and digital resident guide data.
Here are the Top Insights from the Data on How Residents Use a Resident App
Most of Your Residents are Lurkers
A whopping 60% of the times a resident opens their resident app, it is to view the digital social bulletin board to see what other residents or management has posted on the feed. This isn’t surprising because Flamingo’s resident app is built to feel like Instagram or other modern social media apps. And in general, most times people log into apps like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Instagram, it’s to simply browse what other people have posted. Residents simply logging in to view posts from their neighbors might seem useless, but it’s actually how a strong sense of community begins to form. And in 4% of instances, residents actually directly engage by creating a new post, liking another post, or commenting.
Maintenance Requests are a Very Important Use Case
10% of the times residents use their Flamingo resident app is to submit a work order or a maintenance request. This is an important operational element and optimizing this is important if you’re an apartment operator wanting to decrease the number of residents that call to submit maintenance via phone. Some apartment operators have gone as far as rewarding residents for submitting maintenance requests via a resident app rather than interrupting the site team with a phone call.
A Searchable Digital Resident Guide Reduces Calls and Emails From Residents
One of the biggest complaints from onsite teams is having to respond to the same questions over and over again. Our data shows 9% of the times a resident uses their Flamingo resident app is to search for information on the digital resident guide. This means less calls or emails to the onsite team since residents can self-service to find info like wifi information, rent policy, office hours, appliance manuals, quiet hours etc. A digital resident guide is a must-have to reduce calls and emails from residents.
Logins for Event RSVPs & Logins for Rent Payment are Similar
At 4.4% and 4.5% respectively, residents log into their Flamingo resident app to RSVP for resident events about the same number of times that they login to pay rent.
Adding Resident Surveys to a Resident engagementApp Increases Completion Rates
A challenge we’ve heard from many apartment owners and operators is that they have very low completion rates when they send long surveys to residents via email. Modernizing your resident survey program by conducting pulse surveys on the resident app drastically increases survey completion rates and provides just in time data to course correct when issues come up. So it’s no surprise that 2.4% of the times residents used their Flamingo resident app was to complete a resident survey. The need for more frequent surveys is why Waypoint Residential Switched from J Turner to Flamingo.
24/7 Engagement Happens Behind the Scenes / You Can Achieve 24/7 Resident Engagement with A Resident App
1.5% of the time residents used their Flamingo resident app was to send a private message to one of their neighbors. This is critically important because this is exactly the type of resident engagement you want to have. Events are great but since according to Flamingo’s State of Resident Events 2022: How 760+ Apartments Do Resident Events – From Budgets to ROI to Trends, most communities only budget for about 1 event per month, a resident engagement app allows for residents to stay connected with their neighbors 24/7. We wish we could see what they are messaging their neighbors about but unfortunately, for privacy reasons, we cannot access these messages.
Amenity Reservations Didn’t Add Up to Much
Residents only used their resident app only 0.17% of the time to book amenities. Either apartment operators are relying on the front desk to manually manage amenities or many operators are not requiring amenity reservations. In either case, many apartment operators could increase ancillary revenue by driving bookings for guest suites.
Automating Move-Ins Saves Almost 90 Mins Per Move-In
In almost 2% of cases, residents used their Flamingo resident app to complete a move-in, renewal, or move-out tasks including obtaining or verifying renter’s insurance. A feature like this is How Weidner’s Woodin Creek Village Saved 90 Minutes Per Move-in Using Flamingo’s Digital Move-In Checklist.
Onsite Teams Love Automating Move-In, Renewals, and Move-Outs with a Digital Checklist since it saves them 90 Mins per move-in
Summary of the Top 20 Ways Residents Use A Resident Engagement App
- Scrolling Digital Bulletin: 59.98%
- Maintenance Requests: 9.12%
- Searching Digital Resident Guide: 8.54%
- Rent Payment: 4.52%
- Resident Event RSVP: 4.34%
- Digital Bulletin Engagement: 3.67%
- Resident Reward Activities: 3.14%
- Completing Resident Surveys: 2.37%
- Private Message to Neighbor: 1.52%
- Completing Move-In Task: 1.35%
- Messaging Management: 0.33%
- Viewing Local Events: 0.28%
- Getting Renter’s Insurance: 0.21%
- Amenity Reservation: 0.17%
- Completing Move-Out Task: 0.15%
- Completing Renewal-In Task: 0.11%
- Mobile Key or Intercom: 0.11%
- Service Booking (e.g. house cleaning): 0.07%
- Key Release for Guests: 0.03%
- Uploading Pictures from Resident Events: 0.004%
- On-Demand Fitness Workout: 0.003%
Conclusion
We did this research study to help provide insight on how residents use a resident app. If you’re thinking of implementing a resident engagement app, it’s important to understand how your residents might use the resident app. A resident app is not a resident portal. Therefore, how residents use their resident app is very different from what you might be used to with resident portals.
If you already have a resident app, then it’s important to benchmark against industry averages.
