Jeremy Deviesseux is the Director of Ray White Wentworth Point (NSW). With 25 years of experience in property management, we believe him when he tells us that he’s found a way to solve one of the industry’s biggest customer complaints - poor communication - and in turn, blow his competition out of the water.

What’s his secret? Ailo, of course 😉

We recently caught up with Jeremy to learn about how he’s using Ailo to transform not only his team’s communication style, but the way he runs his entire property management business.

Basically, if you're not using Ailo, you’re living in the stone age of property management!

It has completely shifted our focus on what we do as a property management team. By giving us clear processes to follow (via features like Projects!), we’re now finally able to focus on our main team objective of delivering outstanding communication to both our renters and our investors, which will allow us to be able to grow in the future.

The way we communicate with our investors is so much better -  I believe that's our point of difference now. The chat function has allowed us to have faster and more open discussions by removing some of the formalities that come with traditional email. Ailo Chat is inherently more friendly and we're building relationships a lot stronger that way.

I feel that our investors are really starting to get an understanding and appreciation of Ailo. They’re starting to realise the benefits of being able to have their money sooner if they wish and the choice and control they now have at their fingertips. They can pay their bills with a credit card if they please or they can just allow us to continue to pay their bills on their behalf.

Because Ailo has improved our communication, we are now positioned as clear leaders in our field. I have had a number of conversations, even just this week, with prospective landlords about how unhappy they are with their current property manager because of their poor communication. They can’t get hold of their property manager or their principal - no-one is responding to their emails and there really is zero service.

Ailo has also helped us elevate the type of conversations we have with investors. We are a full service agency that can also provide advice on the financial side of things. I ask “Are you aware that, if you were able to get your money straight away, you could pay off your mortgage earlier?” A lot of people are still unaware of the fact that if they pay their mortgage fortnightly or weekly, they can save a lot of money. The look on their face and when they realise they can do that is astounding and it allows us to continue that conversation with confidence because we're telling them something different that no one else has advised them of.

Before Ailo, we’d start out the week by sitting down as a team to list out how many renewals needed to be done, how many properties were in arrears, and how many repairs needed attention.

But now, all of that information is easily accessible on the Ailo dashboard. I can see it at a glance where everything is at, so we automatically save so much first thing in the morning. Our weekly agenda has been sorted for us, already cutting the time we need to meet by half.

After our meeting, the team used to get straight into receipting and chasing arrears - but both of these things are automated for us now. We've actually been hovering on zero arrears on a number of occasions now, which I would have never thought had happened previously on other platforms.

Another big change was the clarity around structure and process Ailo Projects brought to my team. Everyone used to have their own processes, which were kept in the back of their minds - maybe there were a few written down checklists, but it was difficult to train new people as everyone did things differently and we had no single source of truth.

Now, Ailo provides that guidance and structure. It guides us every step of the way on how to conduct tasks like lease renewal, how to prepare a new lease, how to conduct repairs and maintenance. Ailo literally provides complete checklists to follow, so we can close off projects with confidence, knowing that we’ve done everything we’re meant to. We also have a full history of that work to refer to later down the track.

Well, for starters we get to actually enjoy our holidays now - when they’re off enjoying a much needed break, my team don’t have to worry about doing end of month or receipting. They can truly switch off and enjoy their break.

And when they return to work, they’re not snowed under a mountain of catch up work. Take last Christmas for example, normally it takes anywhere from three to four days of catch up work before you start getting the momentum back in the business - but this year it only took us one day. All of the receipting, reporting and arrears chasing was already taken care of, and the team used Ailo Chat to quickly answer any issues that arose over the break.

The amount of training Ailo provided to prepare us for the transition was second to none. The training program was very informative and the personal assistance was fantastic - if we had a question, Ailo would respond back straight away and we were able to have face to face chats which just allowed for everyone's confidence in the system to grow.

It certainly was a big change for the team and it wasn't like the original system at all. We had to change the way we thought about property management. We're now really seeing a massive difference to how we operate our day to day. It's amazing.

We're in a very competitive environment where we've got agencies around us that charge only one or two percent. Those people would be better off giving up on property management and investing their time somewhere else, but we get compared to them.

I'd be very disappointed. We would have to step back into the stone age. I'd have to put more staff on and I wouldn’t be able to see the business growth I’m currently witnessing. It would be like taking a step backwards.