As a provider of self-storage management services, you aim to deliver high-quality results for facility owners at scale. How? Often, it’s by automating crucial processes that reduce manual tasks and human error.

Whether your firm is large with hundreds of self-storage facilities in its care or more boutique with just a handful of management contracts, you have a duty to protect your clients’ interests, and that means offering resources to help them better serve their renters. One such tool is a tenant-protection program, which consumers can purchase to protect their goods while in storage.

You may be thinking, “I’d love to implement this kind of program for my clients, but it sounds complicated.” Thankfully, the entire process can be made much simpler through automation. Look at the real estate investment trusts. Tenant-protection revenue accounts for up to 10% of their net operating income, and yet the secret to their success isn’t their size. It lies in their use of technology, which you can embrace, too!

Today’s tenant-protection programs for self-storage operations come equipped with automation that simplifies each step for you as the third-party management provider as well as the clients you serve and their individual customers. When you use a product that’s backed by a full technology stack, you’re on your way to frictionless enrollment and high conversion rates across the facilities you oversee. Here’s how.

Enrollment

The most important aspect of a successful tenant-protection program is enrollment. Even a high revenue-share product will yield poor results for self-storage owners if adoption is low. The solution: automatic sign-ups.

Tech-savvy tenant-protection providers know the ins and outs of every property-management software on the self-storage market and how to automate enrollment for new and existing renters. At move-in, new customers are automatically enrolled unless they opt out by presenting proof of coverage for their stored goods. Enrolling existing tenants may seem daunting, but it’s effortless when you have technology to manage notice requirements.

Compliance

Requiring some form of stored-goods coverage is becoming standard practice at many self-storage facilities. As the third-party manager, you’re tasked with finding ways to enforce that requirement without increasing hours of manual data entry and compliance checking. This is another area where automation can make your life easier. In fact, your protection plan can be designed to automatically re-sign tenants with expired policies, which prevents a lapse in coverage.

Want to take it a step further? Automate opt-outs by providing tenants with a digital form that syncs with your self-storage management software. The customer’s insurance information is then automatically added to their account. As long as their outside policy is active, they won’t be enrolled in your protection program. And there’s no involvement from facility staff!

Claims

You and your self-storage owners are busy and don’t have time to deal with tenant-protection claims. That’s why a seamless, online submission process is a must. Using the right tools, claims information can be automatically recorded and accessible to you and your self-storage clients 24/7, which is a significant value-add for anyone who wants transparency into the activities at their stores. A simple dashboard provides up-to-date claims information. This knowledge sharing keeps you abreast of possible repair and maintenance issues on your clients’ sites as well as security vulnerabilities reported by tenants.

Reporting

You should never have to wait to find out how your self-storage tenant-protection program is performing. Data on enrollment, earned and available revenue, and claims should be readily accessible at the click of a button. More advanced programs offer detailed metrics, with a dashboard displaying a summary of managed locations across property-management systems or insight to specific stores for custom analytics.

You can even automate the delivery of this information to your inbox. These advanced, automated reporting tools make it easy to identify revenue opportunities and get the most from your tenant-protection product.

As a self-storage management company, you’re focused on increasing your clients’ bottom line, not their stress levels. They trust you to run their business so they can enjoy the benefits of facility ownership without dealing with the day-to-day hassle. An automated tenant-protection program can do the same for you, leveraging technology to help you save time and improve performance.

Nate Kinet is chief revenue officer at SafeLease, a tenant-protection provider that partners with self-storage operators and management firms nationwide. The company leverages technology to create new revenue channels for more than 800 facilities. For more information, email [email protected].