What do Rod Stewart, Scary Spice, almost-centenarians, and bucket lists have to do with Ailo?

Meet Mandy Saies — one of the stars of our customer support team! Known for her down-to-earth attitude, her encyclopaedic knowledge of Ailo and her always-positive outlook, Mandy is a favourite amongst our customers.

With so many customers knowing (and asking for) Mandy by name, we thought it was time for a formal introduction!

I’m a proud Kiwi born and raised, but I moved to Melbourne in 2015 for a work opportunity… and for the coffee. Before joining Ailo I was working in other real estate technology businesses as well as running a successful side hustle in event management. I love music and have worked with some iconic international performers like Mel C from the Spice Girls, Ronan Keating, Carole King and a lot of other Motown artists.

Alongside my role at Ailo, I still manage events! Most recently I planned a concert for Rod Stewart in New Zealand. People find it surprising that I work in both customer support and event management, but I find that there’s actually a lot of helpful crossovers between the two. It’s about attention to detail and providing top notch customer experiences.

First thing’s first — I have my coffee! A soy flat white.

Generally every day is different, but it will usually involve training the team, attending meetings, and of course assisting our customers with any queries they have about using Ailo.

I run training sessions with our staff to ensure everyone has the skills they need to give fantastic customer support. Ailo is a fast-moving business, and we are updating the product all the time. That means we have to stay on top of all the improvements and changes so we can communicate those updates effectively to our customers.

As part of my role, I naturally receive a lot of feedback from customers, so I often have meetings with our Product team and pass on that feedback. At Ailo, customer feedback is used to directly inform how we improve the product, so I love being the conduit between our customers and those who make Ailo!

It’s the mission that first drew me in. Property management has for a long time been a broken industry where no-one trusts anyone; it’s hard for good agencies to differentiate themselves, and a lot of hard work goes by unnoticed.

One of the cool things about Ailo, as I’ve mentioned, is that the business genuinely cares about customer feedback and makes decisions based on it. I love that I can have a conversation with a property manager about a feature they wish they had. And then report back a few weeks later to say it’s now live!

It’s definitely the speed at which investors can access their funds. When a tenant pays their rent, those funds go directly into an investor’s Property Wallet, who can decide in that same moment whether to leave the funds there to pay bills or to instantly transfer them out. If they transfer the funds out, they can put it straight to their mortgage, or use the money for whatever they want.

I’ve worked in the industry for many years, and investors have never had this much choice and transparency before. It’s mind-boggling to think a lot of investors wait up to a month before they receive their money.

A 97-year-old lady, Betty, called because she was renting and her agency had asked her to use the app. We worked through how to download and create an account together over the phone and ended up using Ailo with ease! I was so proud of her.

She mentioned it was going to be her birthday that Wednesday but due to COVID, her kids couldn’t come and see her. So I called her on the day to say, ‘happy birthday — and your payment cleared!’

I love that type of work. Building rapport with people and having a friendly chat here and there is always fun.

I write myself bucket lists and I tell myself I have to conquer the items in two years. So far I’ve conquered four of them. One was, fly to a country for 24 hours. I went to Malaysia. I’ve also done Tokyo for 24 hours, and I got a tattoo there. By the end of this year my goal is to do a month in Croatia.

So far I’ve visited 50 countries, I can’t wait to get back out there and add more to my list!