Automate Support and Maintenance Requests with AI

If you manage apartments or rental homes, you know the chaos that support tickets and maintenance requests can bring. The way property management teams handle resident support and maintenance is transforming with real estate AI. Tasks that once required a desk full of sticky notes and a constantly ringing phone can now be managed smoothly by an AI assistant.

In this post, we’ll explain how to bring order to that chaos by automating support and maintenance workflows using Conduit’s AI platform, and how an AI assistant can handle midnight maintenance calls and routine resident questions alike.

Why Automate Support & Maintenance Requests?

Let’s face it, managing resident support and maintenance tickets the old-fashioned way is a pain. A typical day might involve a flooded inbox each morning and frantic calls about leaking faucets. Even the best property managers can’t be everywhere at once (and they certainly need sleep at 3 AM).

Here are some common challenges of traditional support and maintenance processes:

• Slow responses: Tenants often wait hours (or until the next business day) for replies to emails or voicemails. Urgent issues can get missed if nobody’s constantly monitoring every channel.
• High volume of repetitive questions: “What’s the Wi-Fi password?” “How do I pay rent online?” These questions come up over and over, eating into your staff’s time.
• After-hours emergencies: Late-night lockouts or burst pipes can turn into crises if not addressed immediately. Most offices aren’t 24/7, so urgent needs may not get timely attention.
• Manual work order entry: Staff have to manually create and update maintenance tickets in your system, which is time-consuming and prone to human error (ever forget to log a call?).
• Lack of updates: Residents often feel in the dark about their requests. They send a maintenance request and hear nothing until the repair person shows up.
• Overworked staff: Your team spends a ton of time on minor issues and data entry, instead of providing personal service for a better tenant experience.

“If a guest has a problem, the difference between a five-star and a three-star review is often about how quickly we act.”

— Chrissy Reter, Director of Hospitality at Beckon Homes (Conduit)

The above quote, while from the hospitality world, holds equally true for long-term rentals and housing communities. Residents may not leave public reviews like hotel guests, but their satisfaction, and likelihood to renew leases or refer friends, depends on timely, effective support.

That is why, by deploying an AI assistant like Conduit to automate your support and maintenance, property managers can make sure no message falls through the cracks and no resident waits until Monday for help with a Friday night problem.

Now, let’s understand how Conduit actually makes this happen.

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How Conduit’s AI Streamlines Resident Support

Handling resident support inquiries is a core part of property management. Conduit acts as a super-capable AI concierge for your property, available on all the channels your residents use.

Here’s how Conduit transforms day-to-day resident support:

• Instant Answers to Common Questions: Conduit’s AI is trained on your property information and policies, so it can immediately answer FAQs and routine questions. For example, if a resident asks, “How do I set up automatic rent payments?”, AI can respond instantly with fast, accurate info any time of day.
• Multi-Channel Assistance: Conduit easily handles assistance on all communication channels 24/7, as per the tenant’s convenience. Its AI messaging can text or chat in natural language, and its voice AI can even pick up phone calls to guide residents through self-service options. This means the resident who prefers to text at midnight and the one who calls at 9 am both get served immediately.
• Personalized Responses Using Tenant Data: Because Conduit plugs into your property management system (PMS) and other data sources, it can personalize support. The AI knows who is contacting and can surface relevant information.
• Routing and Escalation When Needed: Not every inquiry can be solved by an instant answer. Sometimes a complex issue or a sensitive complaint needs human attention. Conduit intelligently routes support tickets to the right team members when necessary. In some cases, if the AI might not fully understand a request, it will politely let the resident know it’s handing them off to a human for clarity.
• Consistent, Polite Tone Every Time: One underrated benefit, AI doesn’t have bad days. Conduit’s responses are always professional, friendly, and on-brand. Residents get a consistent experience, even for a late-night weekend question. This consistency builds trust; people feel confident that they’ll get help any time without any attitude.

Conduit basically serves as a virtual support agent on your team. It’s as if you hired a super-knowledgeable assistant who works 24/7, responds in seconds, and knows every detail of your property operations. With routine support taken care of, your staff can focus on high-impact tasks, like building community, improving the property, or tackling those unique issues.

Next, let’s focus on the most critical type of resident request: maintenance issues. We’ll see how Conduit automates the maintenance workflow step by step, turning what used to be an hours-long process into an efficient sequence.

Automating Maintenance Requests with Conduit (Step-by-Step)

Traditionally, handling a maintenance ticket involves a lot of back-and-forth: the resident describes the issue, someone in the office writes it up, calls a technician, logs it in a system, and so on. Conduit simplifies and accelerates this whole chain. Let’s walk through a typical maintenance scenario to show how it works in practice.

Imagine a tenant finds out their kitchen sink is leaking late in the evening. Here’s how Conduit’s AI would automate the support and maintenance workflow, from the moment a resident reports an issue to its final resolution:

Step 1: Instant Issue Intake

Resident report comes in: The tenant messages the property’s support line: “There’s water leaking under my kitchen sink.” The moment this message arrives, Conduit’s AI springs into action. No need for the resident to fill out a separate form or wait until morning. The AI instantly acknowledges the issue.

Conduit might immediately respond with: “I’m sorry to hear that you have a leak. Let’s get that taken care of!”. This quick acknowledgment assures the resident that the issue is noted and help is on the way. From the very first step, the AI responds faster than a human typically could, especially outside of office hours.

Step 2: Intelligent Triage & Classification

After reading the message, Conduit’s AI uses natural language understanding to figure out the type of request. In our scenario, it recognizes this is a maintenance request. Identifying the request type allows AI to follow the maintenance workflow, which involves creating a work order and dispatching a service.

Beyond just flagging it as maintenance, Conduit also considers urgency and severity. A water leak under the sink is important, but is it a minor drip or a major gush? If the message was something like “water is flooding everywhere”, the AI would tag it as an emergency ****and ****escalate ****immediately. In this step, the AI might also pull up contextual data from the integrated PMS: which unit is this, who is the resident, and have there been past issues reported from that unit? All this context helps in the next steps.

Step 3: Information Gathering & Troubleshooting

After classifying the issue, Conduit’s AI will probably ask a follow-up question to gather any additional details needed for a maintenance ticket. Instead of assuming, it makes sure the work order will have the right info. For our leaky sink example, the AI might respond:

“Is the leak coming from the faucet or the pipes below?”

Or if the initial description was very sparse, maybe:

“Approximately how much water is leaking? (e.g., slow drip, steady trickle, or a large amount)”

These clarifying questions serve a couple of purposes. First, they check accuracy for the maintenance tech to know what they’re walking into. Second, it helps assess the urgency of request.  The AI could even ask the resident to snap a photo with their phone and send it, if that’s useful for diagnosis. And all of this feels like a natural conversation.

During this step, the AI might also offer immediate advice if appropriate. For example, for a leaky sink: “You might place a bowl or towel under the leak to catch water. I’m logging a repair request for you right now.” These little tips can prevent damage and show the resident that the system is proactive and caring.

Emergency handling: If at any point the resident’s responses indicate a serious emergency (fire, gas leak, major flooding), Conduit will immediately escalate to human responders. The AI might still continue the conversation to keep the resident calm and informed, but behind the scenes, it’s paging the emergency maintenance line or manager. This escalation logic is built-in to make sure that automation never compromises safety or service quality.

Step 4: Work Order Creation (The “Card”)

Once Conduit has enough info about the maintenance issue, it moves to the next critical task: creating a work order. This is typically where a human would log into a property management system, fill out a form with the tenant’s info, unit number, issue description, and priority level. But Conduit’s AI does all of this instantly and accurately on the backend.

Using its integration with your PMS (Property Management System) or maintenance management software, Conduit auto-generates a work order ticket with all the details. It might look something like this:

For example, behind the scenes, Conduit might create a work order card with information like:

This is an example – your actual system might have more fields (like category: “Plumbing”, or a severity rating). AI has now formally logged the issue, without any delay or manual data entry. It pulls the resident’s name and unit from the database, writes a clear description based on the conversation, sets an appropriate priority, timestamps it, and saves it in the records.

At this stage, Conduit’s job is similar to a diligent assistant who has just filled out the work order form and submitted it. But it doesn’t stop there, it also kickstarts the resolution process.

Step 5: Coordinating Repair & Follow-Up

With the work order created, the focus shifts to resolving the issue. Conduit’s AI now plays the role of communicator and coordinator:

• Notifying Maintenance Staff or Vendors: The AI can send a notification to the appropriate maintenance technician or team. If your system is integrated with an assignment workflow, Conduit might automatically assign the ticket to your on-call plumber or building engineer. Otherwise, it will alert the maintenance supervisor via email or a messaging app like Slack.
• Confirming with the Resident: As soon as the work order is logged, Conduit messages the resident to confirm the request is in the system and help is on the way. It might say: “I’ve reported the issue to our maintenance team. You’ll be contacted soon to schedule the repair.” This confirmation gives the resident peace of mind that the process is underway.
• Scheduling Coordination: Depending on your setup, Conduit’s AI might even handle scheduling conversations. It could ask the resident for their availability or let them know an appointment time. If the time doesn’t work, the resident can reply, and the AI can relay that back or even suggest an alternative. Essentially, Conduit can serve as the go-between scheduler, saving phone tag between the tenant and technician.
• Providing Updates: Throughout the process, the resident stays in the loop. If a part had to be ordered and that’s noted in the system, Conduit could proactively update the resident: “An update: We have ordered a replacement part for your sink and expect it to arrive by Friday. We’ll keep you posted on the repair schedule.”
• Closure and Follow-up: Once the maintenance tech fixes the leak and marks the work order complete, Conduit can close the loop with the resident to confirm and get feedback if the issue is resolved or ask if something’s still not right. If the resident says, “Actually, the pipe is still dripping a bit,” the AI can immediately reopen or log a follow-up so nothing gets dropped.

Throughout this maintenance workflow, not a single human had to manually intervene for the routine parts. The AI handled intake, triage, work order creation, communication, and updates. This is automation at its best for your maintenance requests: mundane tasks are offloaded to AI, while the human touch is reserved for the actual repair work and any complex decision-making.

How AI Support Enhances Your Team Efficiency: A Case Study

Let’s check a specific example of how effective introducing AI to your workflow can be.

Beckon Homes, a property management company using Conduit, was able to automate 66% of all incoming guest inquiries, so their team only had to directly handle the most important 34% that needed human attention. And across Conduit’s client base, up to 90% of routine communications can be automated. So our client’s teams focus solely on the remaining fraction of cases that require personal attention, resulting in faster turnaround and an improved rental experience across the board.

Imagine slashing your support workload by anywhere from two-thirds to nine-tenths. That’s the power of an AI-driven process!

In summary, automating your support and maintenance workflows makes sure your team unlocks a higher level of service that would be nearly impossible to provide with manual methods. Both your residents and your staff feel the positive difference with fast responses and clear communication.

Conclusion: AI in Property Management

With Conduit’s AI automation capabilities, property managers can turn support and maintenance from chores into streamlined workflows. Residents get the convenience of instant service, while property teams get to focus on what really matters without drowning in small tasks.

It’s time to introduce a new AI teammate and give your community the support experience they deserve? (minus the 3 AM phone call stress).

After all, your team could use a break. Let Conduit take those midnight maintenance and support requests off your plate!