How Metro Living Streamlined Maintenance Across 800 Units
A rapidly growing property manager eliminated maintenance coordination bottlenecks, achieving sub-30-second response times and saving 15 hours per week.
The Challenge
Metro Living's rapid portfolio growth from 300 to 800 units in 18 months created an unsustainable maintenance coordination problem. What worked for 300 units was breaking down completely at scale.
The Bottleneck
Every maintenance request—whether submitted via phone, email, text, or tenant portal—required manual intervention from the property management team. Two coordinators were spending their entire workweeks just routing requests to vendors:
- •20+ hours per week manually reading, categorizing, and routing requests
- •Average response time of 4-6 hours (or 24+ hours on weekends)
- •Work orders falling through the cracks during busy periods
- •Tenants frustrated by lack of visibility into request status
- •Vendor confusion from inconsistent communication
The Breaking Point
During a particularly busy week with 87 open work orders, three urgent HVAC failures were discovered only after tenants called to complain they'd heard nothing for 48 hours. The team knew they needed a fundamental change to how maintenance was handled—or growth would have to stop.
The AutomatePM Solution
Multi-Channel Request Capture
Automated intake from every channel tenants use, with intelligent categorization and routing.
- Email parsing that extracts request details automatically
- SMS integration for text-based requests
- Direct tenant portal submissions
- Phone call transcription and routing
Intelligent Vendor Assignment
Smart routing to the right vendor based on category, property, availability, and performance history.
- Automatic work order creation in PM system
- Vendor notification via their preferred channel
- Automatic tenant acknowledgment with timeline
- Status updates sent automatically at key milestones
The Results
Speed & Efficiency
- Response time reduced from 4-6 hours to under 30 seconds
- 15 hours per week saved on coordination
- 24/7 request processing, even on weekends
Quality & Accuracy
- Zero work orders lost or missed
- 100% tenant acknowledgment within minutes
- Complete audit trail for every request
Tenant Experience
- 98% tenant satisfaction with maintenance
- Automatic status updates eliminate "checking in" calls
- Improved online reviews mentioning maintenance
"The maintenance automation was a game-changer for our growth. We've added 500 units since implementing AutomatePM, and we didn't need to hire additional maintenance coordinators. Our tenants are happier, our vendors love the clear communication, and our team can focus on higher-value work."
Streamline Your Maintenance Operations
See how automated maintenance coordination can improve response times and tenant satisfaction.