By Chase Carmel and Katie Conely, OSG
What do Millennials actually want? This question has been front and center in recent years for anyone who is interested in marketing services or products to the globe’s largest rising group with purchasing power. Millennials have been accused of being “flighty” and “killing off” everything from “the concept of the starter home” to “napkins,” according to Business Insider. Millennials began their experience in building their financial savings and their resumés at a time when finding employment was difficult. As a result, they became the “Boomerang Generation,” who in large numbers found refuge by moving back into their parents’ homes or in delaying purchasing a home longer than previous generations.
To cast them in a slightly different light: Millennials are financially careful. They, along with Generation X, are the first group of adults accustomed to having the entire world at their fingertips on their mobile phones. They sift through multiple options before making decisions—they don’t mind taking the time to find the right solution, and they do their research. They believe, often rightfully so, that there might always be something better out there for whatever they are pursuing if they just keep looking. Most importantly, Millennials are wary of being taken for a ride.
So, how do Millennial attitudes and behaviors affect forward technological trends in the HOA market?
A major benefit property management companies and homeowners associations would gain from the Millennial perspective is a greater insistence on integrated, one-stop-shop, technologically savvy solutions for payment processing and reporting. Your younger homeowners and renters want options in paying their bills, from the ability to pay using any device they like to payment automation or scheduling. They already have access to multiple payment channels for utilities, online purchases, flights, insurance, and nearly anything else you can think of. Why not rent or association fees as well?
A significant factor that results in late bill payments is the level of accessibility in bill payment channels. Your customers have busy lives. They may remember to make a payment while waiting in line at the store, for instance, but get distracted on the way home before they can dig out their checkbook. An obvious benefit to creating more digital payment channel options for your busy homeowners and renters is a better likelihood of on-time payments. The customer waiting in line at the store would pay on their phone through a mobile-responsive website, a mobile app, a text-to-pay solution, or by calling in to engage with an interactive voice response menu—if they could.
Paper bills, while sometimes necessary for customers who prefer not to opt in for paperless billing, also present obstacles including mail delays, lack of visibility of when your payers receive and open their bills, and decreased communications interaction from your primarily online audience. Automated electronic billing clears every one of those obstacles and greatly increases your ability to track and make informed projections for incoming payments.
Cutting edge technology in the HOA and property management world is highly focused on digital integration right now. In consolidating information by integrating payment channels and customer details on one searchable reporting platform, your payments vendor can create a simplified command center for your company. Using this, you can access one central source of information about your customers, their preferred payment channels, the type of payments they are making, their interaction with your communications, and your incoming or outgoing payments. The chief end of all of this is to provide you with greater visibility and control over your money.
The more your customers expect from you in terms of digital communications and transactions, the more you ought to require out of your billing company. Property management is one of the last industries to digitize the payment experience for their customers, which means there is a fantastic opportunity for advancement. By streamlining your payments processes across all channels, you can spend more time growing your business and less time on billing organization.
Chase Carmel works for OSG, an international company specializing in billing and communications for multiple vertical markets, including HOA and property management. For the last 13 years he’s been working on improving technology in the HOA space, and is currently serving as the CAI Rocky Mountain Chapter Norther Colorado Committee Co-Chair to bring more educational programs to Northern Colorado.
