Kingsley tops 80% digital payment adoption across their portfolio with Zego™
About Kingsley Management Corporation
- Portfolio: Multifamily
- Zego Products: Zego™ Pay; Zego Engage™
- Accounting Software Integration: Proprietary
- Location: Headquartered in Utah with communities across the United States
Results highlights:
The challenge
Time is at a premium for the team at Kingsley Management Corporation, which supports dozens of communities across the United States. Day or night, teams need to be available to support management staff and residents. Prior to working with Zego, one of the most time-consuming tasks of the on-site teams was managing and processing hundreds of checks, money orders, and paper payments. Without a digital payments solution, the staff was spending their valuable time on manual activities. “We want to let our on-site staff focus on their park’s needs, and not spend their time collecting and inputting checks,” says Dakota Green, a member of the support team at Kingsley.
The approach & outcomes
With goals of increasing operational efficiency, giving valuable time back to their staff and improving safety and security, the team at Kingsley undertook the project of implementing a digital payments solution. Across the portfolio they now are at 81% utilization on average.
Dakota shares that “We have one park in California that went from 0% to 100% utilization in about 3 months. She told their residents they would no longer accept checks. She said it was a night and day difference. She has so much more time to focus on the park’s needs, instead of trying to collect and input checks.”
1. On-site staff change management & training
2. Resident on-boarding
3. Resident incentives
4. Multiple payment options
5. Resident engagement & communication
1. On-site staff change management & training
When rolling out digital payments to a community, a key criterion for success is ensuring the on-site staff is supportive of the goals and vision, and trained on the solution. For the team at Kingsley this means providing training videos for managers, as well as in-person overviews and support. In addition, each on-site manager works closely with an account manager from the corporate office to help them achieve their community goals and objectives.
Setting company-wide goals and driving achievement with incentives is also an important success driver. The Kingsley Management team communicated a goal of reaching 100% digital payments. “As part of our Spring 2020 contest, we offered incentives for on-site managers. They would receive $300 if they reached 75% digital usage, and $500 if they reached 100% digital usage,” according to Dakota.
2. Resident On-boarding
The Kingsley team also takes an active, multi-pronged approach to ensure that residents adopt the Zego Pay solution. All paper bills have a message asking residents to please pay online, along with a link and simple instructions. On-site managers are proactive in letting residents who come in with a paper payment know that “Paying online is better and safer for you. It’s faster and there’s no worry that your payment will get lost,” shares Dakota. They also actively use marketing materials and email blasts to promote their digital payment portal.
3. Resident Incentives
On top of the incentive of incurred ACH payments, which are free to the resident, the Kingsley team has some additional resident treats for paying on-time and online. For example, they offer $10 credits to residents who pay on-time. In the Spring of 2020, in conjunction with the contest for the on-site teams, they also ran resident payment contests to drive digital adoption and specifically auto payments. Any resident who paid rent via AutoPay for three consecutive months during their contest was entered to win a $500 credit towards their next payment.
To get the word out, Kingsley worked with their Zego account representative to order print materials such as door hangers and inserts. They also provided Zego with their residents’ email addresses which were used to create an email blast to announce the contest. “Setting up the contest was very simple since Zego lets us choose the rules. We can really gear it to what we want and what our goals are,” says Dakota.
They were very happy with the results of the combined resident and staff contests, as their overall percentage of digital payments increased, reducing their site teams’ workload and giving them time back in their day. Dakota comments, “This competition and incentive got our managers excited to get their residents online. We were at 64% prior to the competition, jumped to 70%, and ended the year at 81%. For the managers that really pushed to get to 100% online, they have more time to focus on the park and residents instead of collections and inputting checks.”
4. Multiple payment options
To maximize digital payments, Kingsley offers a variety of payment options to meet the needs of their diverse resident demographics. The digital ACH payment fees are incurred by Kingsley, which is a best practice and contributes to their high digital pay utilization rates. They also offer online credit card, debit card, and PayPal payment options.
They also offer Zego CashPay, which enables residents to electronically pay rent with cash from one of 25,000 CheckFreePay(R) locations nationwide. Residents can conveniently pay when they’re out running errands at local retailers such as Walmart. CashPay turns cash and money orders into digital payment methods while giving residents the flexibility to pay how they’re comfortable. “We offer all these options and the usage is dependent on the demographics,” says Dakota “For example, our park in New Mexico uses a lot of CashPay. In California, it’s almost 100% ACH payments.”
5. Resident engagement & communication
The Kingsley team has developed proprietary software that produces their resident bills, which are then sent via email or paper, depending on the resident’s preferences. In order to improve their efficiency further, they recently began working with Zego Mobile Doorman for resident engagement, and are testing the comprehensive mobile app for residents at a number of their communities. Zego Mobile Doorman offers communication tools such as chat and email, as well as critical resident functionality such as work order management, amenity reservations, and pet/vehicle/visitor registration.
Conclusion
With digital pay utilization at 81% across their portfolio, the Kingsley team is excited about the benefits they’ve received from working with Zego, the biggest one being “Definitely time savings. We have way more time to work on more important things within the community. Our team can actually help residents with their needs, instead of spending their time processing 600 paper checks.” shares Dakota. Using online payments also provides Kingsley with more security. “We know that we’re going to get our money because residents are set up for AutoPay and it’s going to come through.”
The Kingsley and Zego teams work together closely not only to implement best practices to increase utilization and operational efficiency but also to meet staff and residents’ needs. As Dakota explains “I can reach out to Zego support if I ever need something and if residents have any questions or issues, they can reach out directly to Zego, which cuts out the middleman and is convenient.” Zego offers a 24x7x365 resident support phone time along with online support options.
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Best practice recommendations for achieving 100% digital payment adoption
With results such as 81% digital payment adoption across their portfolio and 90% adoption at over 50% of their properties, the Kinglsey team is benefitting from increased operational efficiency and more time to support their staff and residents. Plus, they've improved the safety and security of their resident payments resulting in a positive resident experience. By reducing the time spent processing paper checks, associates are free to focus on their residents and making Kingsley communities a great place to live!
Zego offers five recommendations for achieving 100% digital payment adoption at multifamily communities:
1. On-site staff change management and training: Provide on-demand training for your on-site associates around the value and functionality of your digital payment system.
2. Resident on-boarding: Set clear expectations around when and how payments should be made by providing new residents the information they need to pay online from the get-go.
3. Resident incentives: Offer a win-win payment structure that benefits both you and your renters.
4. Multiple payment options: Offer every way to pay digitally, including a cash payment alternative
5. Resident engagement & communication: Ensure your community engagement technology is up-to-date and user friendly.
*Data as of December 2020
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To learn more about how we can help you implement these best practices schedule time with a Zego team member for a quick demo of our platform.