Missed Phone Calls — And Missed First Impression

We're at the midpoint of the year, which is when several of our multifamily clients check in with their portfolios and do a hard look at where the wins are and where struggles are surfacing. Most of the time, the findings are specific to one property or one shift. But this year, one issue keeps surfacing across a noticeable number of Telephone & Onsite Shops: prospects calling a leasing office and simply not getting an answer, sometimes after trying up to a half-dozen times.

This isn't a case of a single property having an off week. It's shown up often enough across different communities, with different clients, and different markets that it's worth calling out on its own, especially during rental peak season.

What we're actually seeing

In a typical Telephone & Onsite Shop, our shopper calls the property first to evaluate phone handling, rapport, and description of the community, then follows up with an in-person visit. In 45% of the past four weeks of shops, the shopper's call went unanswered on the first three attempts — and in some cases, up to twelve calls went to voicemail or rang out with no pickup and no return call.

For context, a real prospective renter almost never calls three times. If the first call goes unanswered, most people either leave a voicemail and move on to the next property on their list, or they don't leave a voicemail at all. Either way, the leasing office never knows the call happened, and the lead is gone before anyone on the team is aware there was interest.

Why this keeps happening

In the shops where this came up, a few patterns tended to repeat:

• Coverage gaps during tours. When the on-site agent is out showing a unit, calls often have nowhere to go if there isn't a second person or a call-forwarding setup in place.
• First-impression training. Making sure that the leasing staff is aware of the weight of a first impression and the need to return calls even when no voicemail is left.
• No consistent voicemail follow-up habit. Even where voicemail was picked up, callbacks weren't always happening the same day, and sometimes even the same week.
• Single-agent offices. Smaller communities with one leasing agent on-site are naturally more exposed to this, since there's no backup when that person is occupied.

Why it's worth addressing before Q3 picks up

Leasing offices spend real money getting the phone to ring in the first place — ad spend, listing syndication, referral programs. A missed call quietly cancels out that spend without anyone noticing, because there's no data point showing the miss. Unlike a bad walk-in experience, which at least gets logged in a CRM or observed by staff, an unanswered call usually just disappears.

Before the peak leasing season shifts in September, this is a good moment to check whether your team has a real answer to a simple question: what happens to a call when your leasing agent is mid-tour? Is your team making the phone call first impression a priority?

What to check on your end

• Confirm whether your office phone forwards to a cell or a second line during tours, or just rings out.
• Look at your call log (if your phone system keeps one) for missed-call volume during lunch hours specifically.
• Set a same-day callback expectation for voicemails and missed calls, and check whether it's actually happening.
• If you run more than one community, compare single-agent sites against multi-agent sites — the gap is often bigger than expected.
• Make sure your team is rotating calls throughout the staff. Sometimes an unwritten rule about "who answers the phone in the office" leads to unnecessary missed calls.

This is exactly the kind of blind spot a Phone Evaluation or Telephone & Onsite Shop is built to catch, since it tests the experience the way an actual prospect would, on a normal weekday, without the office knowing it's being tested. If you want a clear read on whether this is happening at your properties before the fall, it's a quick, affordable place to start.