The property maintenance intake process is the critical first step that sets everything else in motion.Whether you're managing a multifamily portfolio, single-family rental property, or a mix of both, how you capture, triage, and process maintenance requests has a direct impact on your team’s efficiency, resident satisfaction, and ultimately, your bottom line.
What Top Operators Know About Intake
In Dom Beveridge’s Season 3 of Tech Talk With 20for20, leaders across the rental property technology landscape came together to discuss innovations around centralized property maintenance services. We’ve rounded up the most powerful insights and quotes from these founders and CEOs, along with expert commentary from Guillermo Salazar, IrisCX CEO and founder.This is a deep dive into the future of maintenance intake—where AI, automation, and data-driven decision-making are redefining what’s possible.Looking All the Way from Intake Through to Charge backs
“What we really looked at was all the way from intake—whether it comes in from portal, call center, through a system, through an integration—then to triaging, assignments, scheduling, outsourcing, procurement, inventory management, fixed asset invoice processing, payments, and resident chargebacks.” — Ken Murai, CEO, FacilGoGuillermo’s Thoughts:Ken captures the scale of what modern maintenance operations demand. Intake isn’t just about logging a maintenance issue—it’s about igniting a chain of optimized actions that affect your bottom line. The moment a resident reports a maintenance request, every downstream maintenance task—from technician dispatch to customer service feedback—depends on that initial step being fast, accurate, and integrated.Everything Starts at Intake
"A lot of the times when we engage an operator, what Property Meld does is it automates a lot of your intake ... Triage, vendor efficiency, technician efficiency, turns, renos, hiring and sourcing vendors—it all starts at intake." — Ray Hespen, CEO, Property MeldGuillermo’s Thoughts:This is the system-wide lens that maintenance leaders need. Ray frames the intake process not just as a beginning but as the operational epicenter. When intake is structured well, it creates clarity that flows throughout the entire maintenance lifecycle. Technicians receive better information, vendors understand scope more clearly, and residents experience faster resolution. The quality of information gathered through a visual, AI-enhanced intake process dramatically improves decision-making at every subsequent step.Visibility Requires Structured Intake
“Helping the owner have visibility into the maintenance problems so that they can control the fulfillment process was really what we set out to do.” — Mike Travalini, CEO, MezoGuillermo’s Thoughts:Visibility is more than reporting—it’s about control. By structuring your maintenance intake process with smart AI and conversational design, you enable visibility for team members across every layer of your operation. Mezo’s work shows that property maintenance services can be both efficient and deeply resident-centric when the intake is digitized and intelligently managed.Centralize the Process, Not the People
“You're going to get quite a lot of benefit by centralizing that first step—the intake triage process. It's going to be a lot easier to do than centralizing the techs themselves, and you can get a good boost from that as well.” — Dom Beveridge, Principal, 20for20Guillermo’s Thoughts:Dom gets tactical here. Property owners often think centralization means moving team members physically—but that's a mistake. Instead, centralize your maintenance request workflow first. With the right technology, your existing team can perform triage from anywhere, allowing for specialized expertise even across distributed locations. This approach streamlines workflows, improves resident satisfaction, and reduces time-to-resolution without disrupting your organizational structure.Ask Smarter:
Questions with AI
“Thanks to LLMs... we can take unstructured data and start asking questions about our maintenance operations that we could not ask before. Like, who's the best technician at replacing light fixtures? What model of appliance typically gives us the most problems? Where do we spend the most time? The world is really different now.” — Daniel Cunningham, CEO, Leonardo247Guillermo’s Thoughts:Daniel taps into the magic of large language models. Most maintenance intake processes today collect unstructured data—messages, voicemails, even technician notes. By applying AI to that unstructured layer, we unlock new kinds of intelligence. Want to know which rental property consumes the most maintenance hours? Or which team member is best at resolving HVAC issues? It starts with how—and what—you capture at intake.Good Maintenance Needs Good Management
“Community managers are stretched thin in terms of what they’re doing and the breadth of tasks they’re asked to do. Expecting that they’ll run a maintenance operation efficiently is asking too much. But if you have somebody who really knows and cares about maintenance and concentrates on that, good management will pay a lot of dividends.” — Jindou Lee, CEO, HappyCoGuillermo’s Thoughts:Jindou cuts right to the core of why so many maintenance intake processes struggle: the wrong people are managing them. When community managers are expected to juggle leasing, resident satisfaction, and maintenance ops, intake falls through the cracks. Maintenance isn’t a side task, but a specialized function. Putting it in the hands of people who “know and care” is the first real step to centralization, better customer service, and faster resolution of maintenance issues.End-to-End or Bust
“You need to look at that workflow end to end... from the Notice to Vacate all the way to rent-ready. It’s a death by a thousand cuts unless you solve every piece, including intake.” — Elik Jaeger, CEO, SuiteSpotGuillermo’s Thoughts:Intake without follow-through is wasted effort. Elik emphasizes the importance of managing maintenance workflows holistically—from initial service requests to post-move-out turns. For rental property operators, this means building systems that don’t just capture requests but guide each maintenance task through resolution with minimal human intervention. It’s the only way to scale.You Can’t Support What You Can’t See
“We had to go into the granularity of how we are going to manage the acquisition of a home, then move a resident in after a renovation... and then how do you support that resident and the things that break in a home without any data points?” — Jay McKee, CEO, LessenGuillermo’s Thoughts:Jay highlights one of the biggest risks in rental property operations: decisions made without data. When your maintenance intake process is analog or inconsistent, you miss the patterns that help you forecast labor, plan turns, or allocate capital. Jay’s challenge wasn’t just scale—it was visibility. With smarter intake, Lessen turned a scattered process into a source of strategic advantage.It’s Not Just Process—It’s Participation
“Our biggest problem as a company was: how do we get our maintenance teams more engaged, more active, more involved? So we gamified the whole maintenance experience.” — Sean Landsberg, CEO, AppWorkGuillermo’s Thoughts:Sean’s approach shows that the maintenance intake process doesn’t end when the work order is submitted—it reverberates through every technician interaction. By designing intake with technician usability in mind, AppWork increased team engagement, accountability, and service quality. If your techs aren’t equipped and motivated after intake, you haven’t solved the real problem.Gamification is more than flashy UX—it’s performance strategy.What We’ve Learned About Property Maintenance Intake
Across every conversation, one theme rings loud and clear: the maintenance intake process is no longer a passive inbox. It’s an active system that determines how fast, how well, and how affordably you serve your residents. Done well, it empowers your maintenance technicians to succeed, ensures team members stay focused, and gives property owners confidence in their operations.It helps eliminate guesswork in emergency maintenance situations, reduces delays in routine maintenance tasks, and creates consistency in customer service experiences.Final Thoughts from Guillermo
We've spent years talking about "digitizing" maintenance, but the time has come to talk about optimizing it—starting with intake. If you're still relying on manual forms, siloed call centers, or portals without structured data collection, you're missing critical opportunities for efficiency.The future of property maintenance intake is both visual and intelligent. When residents can show their issues rather than just describe them, and when that visual data can be enhanced with AI to identify patterns and suggest solutions, everything downstream becomes more efficient.Yes, this is about technology. It's also about performance. It's about delivering modern property maintenance services that create clarity, not confusion—for your residents, your maintenance technicians, and your bottom line.Our mission is to simplify the homeowners & home builders customer experience. Let Iris do the work.
Up next
Getting to Hell Yes! in Selling: Insights from Dennis Steigerwalt
By: Guillermo Salazar • 12 January 2025
Dennis Steigerwalt: Driving Housing Innovation with Vision, Collaboration, and 'Hell Yes!' Solutions
The importance of online product reviews [+3 ways to get more]
By: IrisCX • 19 September 2022
Online reviews are impactful because they reach people with purchasing intent – a total of 93% of new customers consult reviews before purchasing a product or service. With virtual CX, your team can start receiving and leveraging better quality reviews.
Building Value: How New Home Builders Save Big with a Stellar Customer Experience Strategy
By: Guillermo Salazar • 08 January 2024
7 ways to measure your CX program in New Home building