hen people think about self-storage facilities, a manager cruising around in a golf cart checking locks, showing units, and keeping things secure may spring to mind. The downside of that is what many prospective renters also know of self-storage communications—a busy tone or a voicemail apologizing for the inability to get to the phone, often within already limited business hours that coincide with most prospective renters’ own busiest periods.

“The ability to rent a unit online was few and far between before COVID,” says Jennifer Downer, COO at XPS Solutions, with 24 years of experience in remote management for self-storage property owners. “Many operators were forced into action to accommodate prospective tenants.”

Out of necessity arose a boon of options to switch to online reservations and automation.

“Self-storage in general is a little old school,” says Sneha Elizabath Jose, product manager of Mariposa and Synergy at Tenant, Inc. “A lot of people are used to doing it the traditional way. There was a bit of change management for them to move to an online platform. They might even feel like, ‘Oh, my job is gone.’ We set the expectation. Your job is not over; it’s just done in a better way so you can concentrate on more important things within your business.”

This change in attitude has improved efficiency for owners and service through convenience for customers.

“After launching self-service kiosks in the early 2000s, OpenTech recognized its future in modern self-storage and went all in to help companies connect with tenants, simplify their operation, and grow their business,” says Kristi Adams, vice president of marketing for OpenTech Alliance. “With innovations that reset industry standards, we’ve built a robust property technology company with a portfolio of 10-plus products to provide practical solutions to tenant and operator challenges.”

While there are inherent costs to abandoning paper logs and home-created Excel sheets for tech, the financial benefits have shown to overcome any initial hit to the budget.

“One financial pro is that it frees up your management to focus on other revenue-generating endeavors like marketing and collections,” says Downer. “It may also allow you to reduce overhead by adjusting office hours and payroll. A financial con would be the cost of ‘paying to play’ online. Just as you would want to be the first person to answer the call of a prospect, you also want to be the first facility online that can answer the need of the prospect, or they will move on to the next location.”

Greater access to customers leads to higher levels of business being accomplished.

“Pros consist of 24/7 availability of potential customers to make reservations at any time leading to increased occupancy,” says Adams. “You also now have a paperless process you have automated, saving on time and labor.”

“From my standpoint, the benefits far outweigh the challenges,” says Jose. “Our websites show inventory to a much larger audience, and they can tailor campaigns or ads and then put them on Google, put them on YouTube. If customers are searching for self-storage, those ads pop up and then they can click and get a promotional rate versus walking into the store. The tabs on the top of listings are created to showcase whatever feature or amenity you offer, such as climate-control units, and clicking creates a unique URL to use in blog posts. Anyone coming through that blog post sees a filtered view of climate-control units. We can see where customers are coming from on the backend, giving us a powerful marketing tool that shows companies exactly where they should spend their money. The only con I see is that we are capturing customer data, so it’s very important to ensure the data is secure and it’s not exposed to any breaches or cyberattacks.”

While convenience has helped prospective tenants, many considering switching to online systems have concerns.

“Technology is great until it isn’t,” says Downer. “If your property management software is integrated with your website, it is critically important that the data within it is accurate. For example, if a tenant reports they have moved out, and that unit is put back into service without checking it, it is possible that it could be rented online but still full of items. On the contrary, allowing rentals online in essence extends your office hours by allowing prospects to rent and even move in outside of normal office hours.”

There always needs to be balance of convenience versus personal service in adding automation to a business.

“Cons are very few, but some that come to mind are removing the personal touch that many operators pride their business on,” says Adams. “You can only communicate so much about how you differentiate on a website rental flow. However, customers often prefer to do things at home over the phone or online versus having to come into the office during a busy moving season in their life. In that aspect, you are enhancing the overall experience they have with self-storage.”

The switch to online reservations is not the only advancement for self-storage companies.

“Fully automated facilities are no longer the future; they are the now for many operators, as the model offers significant benefits in terms of operational efficiency, scalability, and customer convenience,” says Adams. “Online reservations with a rental completion at the facility via a kiosk where you can capture a picture of the tenant, get a driver’s license scan, and sign the lease completes that entire fully automated model.”

“There are already many operators who have fully automated facilities,” says Downer. “Partnering with a vendor that offers remote management solutions is the ideal way to do so.”

A major benefit to bringing automation to facilities is lowering the break-even point, allowing for smaller properties to exist that could not have supported the cost of a manager’s salary. This enables owners and investors the opportunity to move into key locations ideal for the storage market that might have otherwise been too small in square footage to work out financially.

“One fully remote group Mariposa serves comes to mind,” says Jose. “They have one manager for five or six properties. They do not have managers in the individual properties. Customers can go onto the website or app, make a reservation for their rental, get a code for the electronic gates on the property, walk in and show their pin on the mobile app to enter the building, go to their unit again opening it with their app, stow their belongings, and come out leaving their goods secure, without having to talk to anyone. This business started with a small, single property. They then were able to open two or three more locations, and now they are constantly expanding—all because they can do this using online reservations and the storage software. They couldn’t afford to have managers in each location, but using tech they can easily manage a big portfolio remotely.”

“It could potentially hinder the mom-and-pop facilities,” says Downer. “Allowing online reservations 24/7 eliminates the missed opportunities that occur when the manager is out checking locks on Monday morning. Monday happens to be our highest call volume day at XPS, and at least 20 percent of those calls are prospective tenants looking for a unit.”

While some large corporations are going all in on bringing high-end online reservations to the storage space, many software companies offer a variety of plans at different price points, giving smaller operations a path to join the game. Tech can also help prioritize mom-and-pop operators’ time for the more personal touch of handling face- to-face customers.

“AI Chatbots can handle customer inquiries,” says Adams. “It can guide them through the reservation process and provide instant responses, reducing the need for human intervention.”