The Arize Buyer Experience

Arize Company Overview

Arize is a smart apartment solutions company offering the convenience of smart automation to multifamily properties owners, property managers and their residents. The Arize platform upgrades multi-family properties with increased operating efficiencies and higher earning potential through their suite of smart home devices and the Arize Management Portal, while tenants enjoy modern
smart home amenities, devices, and mobile app features for a connected and secured living experience provided by the Arize Resident App.

Problem Statement

Arize’s company objective for 2021 - 2022 was to implement a UX research strategy that would improve the Property Manager Buyer experience at every stage of the purchasing journey to increase our total sales and in-unit installations throughout the United States.

As the primary and sole UX researcher, I was able to accomplish these goals by providing high value, actionable insights and deliverables that directly aided our operation teams in the discovery of opportunities for improved sales, marketing, implementation and product initiatives.

Business & UX Objectives

Business Objectives

• Increase overall sales to at least 15,000+ new unit installations nationally by end of 2023.

UX Research Objectives

1. Assess PM company buyer experience to uncover opportunities to introduce new initiatives that will help our company accomplish 2023 business goals.

2. Increase multifamily and property management industry and customer knowledge company wide through mixed-methods research.

3. Identify Property Management companies’ and apartment residents’ core values, wants, and needs regarding smart apartment technology.

4. Assess current and future business development and marketing strategies so they effectively target and attract our core B2B & B2C audiences.

Research Methodology

Through research project requests and collaboration across teams as well as my overarching research goal to deepen customer knowledge company wide, I was able to formulate an exploratory and generative mixed-methods research approach to effectively meet our current business and UX research objectives. Our core research initiatives included:

1. Regional Property Manager (RPM) User Interviews

2. Apartment Tenant Motivation Survey

3. Competitor Buyer Journey Interviews

This case study will review each of the 3 research studies, my role and contribution in each, and the analysis and key insights I uncovered.

It will also provide an overview of the research deliverables that were created based on the analysis and synthesis of key insights and an overview of the major themes and the collaborative initiatives that Arize has implemented as result of my research efforts.

Research Tools

Collaboration

• Met with BDM and Marketing team leads to review current business models and pricing strategies and understand the challenges they face when presenting our subscription-based business models to potential clients.

• Advocated for BDM and Marketing team leads attendance in all interviews to introduce them to the UX interview process and build empathy toward the wants, needs, and challenges of our B2B audience.

Interview Synthesis & Analysis

I analyzed over 15+ hours of user interviews using an interview tagging taxonomy, a mixture of deductive and inductive coding, and thematic analysis.

We identified several insights surrounding PM’s current understanding of smart technology benefits and capabilities, their overall interest and use of smart technology, and how they structure yearly budgets for large scale property improvements.

These insights directly influenced how our subscription model plan was to be modified, structured and presented to all current and future clients.

Key Interview Takeaways & Insights

Insight #1:

PM companies all have very diverse and specific challenges, wants, and needs that vary based on company size, property and apartment unit types, overall portfolio size and resident demographics

Insight #2:

Our current smart device products and management software features are not resonating or attractive to regional property manager audience.

Insight #3:

PM audience does not fully understand the capabilities of smart apartment technology and its potential to increase operational efficiency and lower net operating income (NOI) through remote IoT device management

Insight #4:

Similar PM job titles may have very different core responsibilities across PM companies, which can make it difficult for our sales team to target the correct individuals when discovering new leads.

Insight #5:

PM companies need reviews and testimonials of our products and services from reputable PM companies and feel that they need first hand experience using our smart apartment platform before installing throughout an entire property.

Tenant Motivation Survey

My Role

I designed the survey questionnaire, conducted several rounds of survey pilot testing to validate the data we were gathering, recruited resident participants, and conducted statistical testing using SPSS to uncover any significant group differences related to resident demographics and their motivation to pay for a monthly smart device package, the amount they’d be willing to pay for smart apartment technology, and gage resident interest in our current smart device offerings.

Research Objectives

Designed a survey targeting current apartment renters (n=299) with and without previous smart device experience to:

1. Understand apartment residents current use, expectations, wants, and needs related to smart apartment technology software features and hardware devices.

2. Uncover any group differences between resident demographics (e.g. age, marital/familial status, income, building type, etc.) and their overall motivation, interest, and amount their willing to pay for a “monthly device subscription plan”.

3. Improve our marketing and sales team targeting strategy so they can better target communities with specific resident demographics and property types.

Research Tools

Collaboration

I collaborated with Sales and Upper Management to define survey research requirements and objectives, draft survey questions and analysis methods, review initial survey pilot results, and update sales and marketing collateral with key data insights gathered from my both qual and quant analysis.

Synthesis & Analysis

I conducted hypothesis testing to identify significant differences between resident demographics related to their motivation to pay for a monthly smart device package for their apartments, the overall price that different resident demographics would be willing to pay for smart apartment technology, and descriptive statistical analysis to uncover insights regarding resident interest in our current and future smart device offerings that could be used for marketing and sales collateral.

I also conducted several rounds of inductive coding and sentiment analysis for all open ended responses that helped us identify major key insights regarding potential resident incentives programs, specific device interests, and any objections to our current smart device and resident mobile app features.

Hypothesis Testing Results

I conduced hypothesis testing to identify significant differences between resident demographics related to their motivation to pay for a monthly smart device package for their apartments. Below is a sample of 3 of the critical hypothesis and testing results from the tenant survey:

Hypothesis #1: Renters who feel more secure in their communities will be less motivated to pay for the smart device subscription package and would want to pay a lower subscription price per month.

• A Mann Whitney U test indicated that tenants who felt less secure in their communities (mean rank = 120.34) were significantly more motivated than tenants who felt more secure in their apartments (mean rank = 102.70) to pay monthly for a smart device subscription package, U=5112.00, z=-2.16, p<.031.

• A Mann Whitney U test indicated that there was no significant difference in the amount the more secure or less secure group would be willing to pay per month for a smart device package, U=6629.00, p<.23.

Hypothesis #2: Tenants who live in high-rise and mid-rise apartments (n=164) will be less motivated than tenants who live in garden style/low-rise apartments to pay a monthly fee for our current smart device package.

• A Mann-Whitney U test indicated that tenants who live in high-rise or mid-rise communities (mean rank = 127.74) were significantly less motivated than tenants who live in garden-style/low-rise communities (mean rank = 149.53) to pay a monthly fee for our current smart device package, U=8031.50, p<.02.

Hypothesis #3: Younger tenants (ages 18-34) will be significantly more motivated than older tenants (ages 36-64) to pay monthly for a smart device subscription package.

• A Mann-Whitney U test indicated that there was no significant difference between age groups and their motivation to pay monthly for a smart device subscription package, U=10356.50, p<.31.

Key Takeaways and Insights

Insight #1: Majority of participants either strongly agreed (43%) or agreed (21%) that they would be motivated to pay a monthly subscription price to “rent” smart devices, with only 18% of participants stating they would not be motivated at all to pay for a smart device subscription package.

Insight #2: There was no significant difference related to income, age, property type, sense of security, or familial status and the price they would be willing to pay for a monthly smart device subscription package.

• Majority of participants (68%) would be willing to pay $10 - $60/month for a smart device subscription package.

Insight #3: Our current device package is too focused on security and not attractive to residents who live high and mid-rise communities.

• Video doorbells (67%), smart thermostats (61%), smart lights (47%), and smart cameras (41%) were the smart devices that participants were most interested in that we did not currently offer.

• When evaluating our current smart device offerings, participants were most interested in the Arize smart lock (75%) and entry sensor (69%).

Buyer Journey Interviews

Buyer Journey Interviews

My Role

I planned, moderated, and analyzed 10 user interviews using both deductive and inductive coding methods, sentiment analysis, and thematic analysis to understand Property managers current challenges, wants, and needs related to the purchase and implementation of smart apartment technology across their properties.

Research Objectives

I conducted a total of moderated 10 interviews with Regional Property Managers who use competitor smart apartment platforms (e.g. SmartRent, Homebase, Dwelo) to:

1. Understand the full Buyer journey for smart apartment technology and uncover opportunities to collaborate company wide to improve operations at each stage of the buyer journey.

2. Understand the current use, challenges, and needs of PM companies that use competitor smart apartment platforms.

3. Uncover major pain points with competitor operations and strategies to to provide more value and uncover potential key differentiators for Arize.

Research Tools

Collaboration

• I met with Marketing, Product, Sales, and Implementation team leads to discuss project requirements and define research objectives that we needed to achieve to improve every stage of the buyer journey.

• Marketing and Sales team leads were also encouraged to join all moderated interviews to learn more about the UX interview process and continue to get first-hand feedback about our competitors’ sales processes.

Synthesis & Analysis

I conducted several rounds of deductive and inductive coding, sentiment analysis, and thematic analysis that helped our team understand the wants, needs, and challenges our B2B target audience face during each stage of the smart apartment buyer journey which directly aided in the discover of several opportunities and creative initiatives that have greatly impacted our team, improved operations processes at each stage of the journey, and helped our company get closer to achieving our business objectives.

Key Takeaways & Insights

Insight 1: The main criteria that property management companies consider when evaluating smart apartment technology solutions are:

• Integration capabilities with property technology they currently use (“How will the Arize platform work with our current suite of software management tools?”

• Perceived overall usefulness (“Does the Arize platform solve the specific problem we’re trying to overcome”?)

• Overall Price and ROI (“Will this investment actually attract more tenants and be worth it in the long run?”)

• Ease of use and learnability of the platform and smart devices (“How difficult will it be to train my PM team to use the Arize Management Web Portal?”)

• On-going customer support (“How will Arize take care of us after the sale?”)

• Data security and smart device reliability (“How will Arize keep our property and resident data secure?”)

Insight #2: There are typically a small group of “Influencers” within a property management company that are tasked with evaluating smart apartment technology.

• Multifamily property managers can be broken up into 3 core groups based off our interview data:

  1.) The Decider/Buyer: Most involved in the contract signing stages and has the final say and main concern is overall price and ROI

  2.) The Influencer/Motivator: Main goal is to find and evaluate property technology solutions that improve operations by saving time and reducing costs.

  3.) The User: The day to day operations team who would be the core user of the Arize smart devices and Management Web Portal

Insight #3: The most difficult task for Property Management companies when evaluating smart apartment technology solutions is that there is no clear distinction of the key differentiators or benefits of the potential brands, types of smart devices, software features, or explanation of the pros and cons of different installation methods (e.g., DIY install vs. using a smart apartment vendor).