Phone, text, and inbox coverage — triaging maintenance, dispatching vendors, and booking tours, so nothing sits in voicemail until morning.
After hours and on weekends, residents hit voicemail or a generic answering service that just took a message. Maintenance emergencies sat until morning, leasing leads went cold, and the office spent the first hours of every day digging out from a backlog of texts, emails, and missed calls.
With 3,200 units across seven states, “we’ll get back to you” wasn’t cutting it — and staffing a 24/7 desk was never going to pencil out.
Rather than staff a 24/7 desk, the team handed the after-hours desk over. Unify stands ready on the phone, the text line and the inbox — it picks up every resident the moment they reach out, handles it end to end, and pulls in a person only when something genuinely needs judgment.
Set up once, in plain language — “whenever a resident reaches out after hours, handle it end to end, and brief us in the morning.” Unify turned that into a standing job: no phone tree, no answering service, no one on call.
Every time a resident reaches out, it runs the same loop:
Here’s the night as it actually unfolded — message by message, down to how it reached for each app. Only the calls that needed judgment ever made it to a human.
An emergency leak — opened a work order, dispatched the on-call plumber, and talked the resident through the shutoff while help rolled.
Logged a quiet-hours complaint and sent the unit upstairs a policy reminder — no manager woken over one report.
Answered a leasing lead while it was still warm and booked a self-guided tour for the weekend.
Plumber checked in on-site; updated the work order and closed the loop with the resident it had promised a follow-up.
Answered the gym’s holiday hours and issued a one-time code for a waiting package.
Itemized a balance and sent a secure payment link; the account was clean, so it handled the whole thing itself.
The office opened to a clean board — every interaction written back to AppFolio and one brief posted to the team.
Each resident message and run event lands on the left. Watch each one get worked end to end across the apps — turning to a person only when something needs judgment.
A resident with a midnight leak gets a real answer and a plumber on the way — not a voicemail. By the time the office opens, the overnight is already handled and summarised.
Figures shared with permission; some operational details anonymised at the customer’s request.
Copy the brief below and paste it into Unify. It’ll walk you through the prerequisites, connect what it needs, and stand the workflow up with you.
I manage a portfolio of residential rentals, and after hours there's no one to answer residents. Overnight maintenance, leasing inquiries, rent questions and noise complaints hit voicemail and get sorted the next morning — so emergencies wait, leads go cold, and the office starts each day digging out of a backlog. Run the after-hours resident desk. Apps/channels: AppFolio (property system — residents, units, leases, work orders, ledgers), SMS (resident texts), email (leasing inquiries), Google Calendar (tours, amenity hours), Stripe (payment links), Slack (morning brief). Runs whenever a resident reaches out after hours, plus a wrap-up when the office opens. For each message: 1. Identify the resident or lead and pull up their unit, lease and history from AppFolio. 2. Handle it end to end — triage maintenance and dispatch the on-call vendor for emergencies, answer leasing questions and book tours, explain balances and send payment links, log noise complaints and send policy reminders. 3. Write every interaction back to AppFolio as you go. 4. Only pull in a person when something genuinely needs judgment. When the office opens, post one morning brief to Slack: what was handled, what's still open, and that nothing was dropped.
Tell us the job that never gets done before close. We'll wire it up on a call and you can watch it work.
