An iPad app for field associates

The challenge

Gables Residential manages more than 31,500 apartment homes and 500,000 square feet of retail space. The real estate company needed a mobile marketing and sales tool to help agents in the field manage and track retail space.

By investing in our proposed customer experience strategy, Gables was able to make improvements that reduced spend on sales and marketing – a savings of over $1 million – and gain more value from its current investments.

What we did

We developed the Gables iPad sales application real estate app as a mobile solution that provided leasing agents in the field with access to unit availability, floor plans, amenities, and leasing applications. Prospects can specify a rent range and get a preview of available units and floor plans. We also automated numerous CRM communication tasks, such as mailing brochures and thank you notes.

As the former Digital Agency of Record for Gables, we produced a large number of projects together, including:

• Gables corporate site and enhanced search
• Tablet & kiosk sales application
• Lead-to-lease customer dashboard and custom APIs

engagements

• Gables corporate site and enhanced search
• Tablet & kiosk sales application
• Lead-to-lease customer dashboard and custom APIs

technology stack

• Ruby on Rails
• EmberJS
• Sphinx Search

experiences delivered

• Digital strategy
• UX design
• iPad application development

Floorplan details at your fingertips

While showing a floorplan to a customer, associates can search and filter other potential spaces, by guest preference.

View and pinch-zoom on site plan drawings

This is a great way to help orient customers and show community amenities.

A collaborative partnership

After an initial project – the creation and launch of Gables’ corporate site and search application, Gables’ leadership requested that we bring our design thinking to its sales and leasing process.

We collaborated with the Gables technical, operations and sales teams to understand their current leasing process. Then we worked with the cross-functional team to create a new iPad-enabled sales process. The new app gives the leasing associates everything they need right at their fingertips:

• The Gables sales process, which uses a checklist of important steps, from community amenities to the lease application
• A preview of available units and floor plans
• Automated mailings for brochures and thank you notes
• Automated form-filler, which eliminates the manual entry of paper forms and notes at the end of each day

We also worked with the Gables IT team to design and implement APIs that make it easy for leasing associates to pull up information that was previously provided by prospective residents via web, email, or phone. To create a seamless experience, data was prepopulated so visitors would only need to provide their personal information once. To achieve this, we collaborated with Gables’ technical, operations, and sales teams to understand their current leasing process.

The Result: A state-of-the-art, touch-enabled experience for prospective residents and leasing associates.

Outcome

$1 Million

In the first year, Gables Residential saved over $1 million in advertising costs with a cost-per-lease model that bypassed expensive subscription services.

35% increase

Gables experienced a 35% increase in organic leads in the first quarter after the launch of the new website platform.