My guest in this episode is Patrick Hill, CEO of Realm which many of you may know from the REI-endorsed communication app. But over the past few months, Patrick has been working on a second, significant project - introducing AI to property management with an AI called Claire. 

When you add the customer benefits to the equation - which in the tenancy space is coming off a low bar - the whole thing becomes a complete no brainer. Adopting this kind of technology gives us the tools to make customer service the centre of our businesses while making life less stressful for our staff. My prediction is that in five years time, we’ll look back at 2019 and wonder how on earth - and why on earth - we struggled to do it manually for so long.

05:27 Patrick gives us the elevator spiel for CLAIRE and Realm.

06:53 Patrick explains CLAIRE’s functionality with Google Home and how CLAIRE is now a lot cleverer than that – and she’s a lot more than a chatbot with thousands of hours of learning.

09:10 Patrick explains how CLAIRE engages with popular CRMS including MyDesktop and VaultRE although she is in fact, CRM agnostic.

10:28 Did you know property managers across Australia answer 1 million emails a day? Patrick goes through the stats of just how ‘busy’ our PMs are, but is that work adding any value? We discuss how to use AI in property management to create an ‘always on’ business that is manageable for your team.

13:13 We discuss stress and burnout in property management and CLAIRE’s role in assisting with that.

14:25 Patrick highlights some of the extraordinary success that clients are having with CLAIRE.

16:18 Patrick outlines how Realm pivoted to become CLAIRE and their investment from the Singleton Group and how they are now approaching other industries with CLAIRE.

21:34 We discuss the App Stacking debate.

23:46 What does a typical day look like with an AI assistant like CLAIRE? Patrick deep dives into the work that CLAIRE is currently doing.

26:56 OMG it takes just 10 MINUTES TO ONBOARD CLAIRE!

28:17 How AI is changing – rather than replacing – our jobs.