Hillpointe x GrottoAI Case Study

Summary

Hillpointe, an NMHC top-10 developer, has an ambitious mission. They aim to provide a consistent, top-tier brand experience across their portfolio, while delivering 10,000+ units of attainable housing per year.

To get there, Hillpointe rolled out GrottoAI's Real-time Call Guidance and AI Tour Coaching across their portfolio, building a leasing operation that ramps new agents in days, converts more tours, and drives NOI.

Key Results

• Agents who use Grotto show 27% higher tour-to-lease conversion and 50% higher tour-to-application conversion
• Agents using Grotto saw 2.5x higher tour-to-lease conversion on their high-scoring vs. low-scoring tours, and they closed leases within 7 days 2x as often
• 10x faster new hire ramp time on-site (from 90 to 9 days) and in the contact center (30 to 3 days)
• Unprecedented visibility and time savings with >80% of tours recorded and 100+ hours saved on administrative tasks per property per month
• Removing Grotto returns coached behaviors to un-coached baselines within ~6 weeks

The Hillpointe Vision

America’s most trusted brands all share one quality. A Starbucks coffee tastes the same in Tampa as it does in Boise. The check-in at a Hilton in Atlanta is identical to the one in Phoenix. Pull into any Chick-fil-A drive-thru and you’ll hear “my pleasure” instead of “you’re welcome,” whether you’re in rural Georgia or NYC. America’s most trusted brands are defined by the consistency of the experience they provide.

Multifamily leasing has never had that. Even within a single company and asset class, a renter's experience comes down to which property they walk into, which agent is on shift, and the kind of week that agent is having. It's a coin flip.

Hillpointe, a vertically-integrated developer delivering 10,000+ units per year across the Southeast, saw that things could be different.

For Josh Draughn, Hillpointe’s SVP of Marketing and Centralized Operations, the goal was not just to run leasing better. It was to make Hillpointe a household name and a brand renters would trust on sight. His vision was to improve leasing by bringing Starbucks-like consistency to the industry.

Hillpointe recognized that consistency is how you scale operational excellence, and operational excellence is how you maximize NOI over time.

“The brand focus, and what we're looking for at Hillpointe, is Starbucks, it's Chick-fil-A, the same experience across the entire portfolio. When I order a Starbucks drink in Seattle versus downtown Winter Park, Florida, I want to make sure I get the same customer experience. Consistency is everything, because it's so impactful to that first impression, which is hard to gain back if you don't start off well.”

Josh Draughn, SVP of Marketing and Centralized Operations, Hillpointe

The Challenge

Consistency in multifamily comes down to people. The prospect experience is only as good as the agent delivering it, so a consistent brand requires an excellent team at every property, and that’s difficult to staff in a growing portfolio.

Leasing agent turnover runs north of 30% annually (NAA), and staffing / recruitment has topped operating challenge lists for years (NAA Survey Results). Typically, operators are competing over a shrinking pool of experienced agents, and ramping new-hires takes months.

To meet its operating goals, Hillpointe had to overcome three key obstacles the industry had never solved:

1. A multifamily talent shortage. Many Hillpointe locations are in rural areas with few experienced leasing agents. Hillpointe was not going to solve consistency by finding more tenured leasing veterans.
2. New-hire ramp times. Historically, it took up to three months to train an on-site hire from outside the industry. That’s a structural barrier for a developer delivering 10,000+ units a year.
3. A blind spot in the leasing funnel. The tour is where the prospect experience is won or lost, but historically, it’s been a black box for managers. Short of being there live or paying for an inadequate, quarterly secret shop, they were flying blind.

“One of the biggest concerns I've had for 18 years is I don't have any visibility. Once the person gets on site, I don't truly know what happens.”

Josh Draughn, SVP of Marketing and Centralized Operations, Hillpointe

Hillpointe knew what excellent leasing excellence looked like from years of studying top performers. What they needed was a way to instill it in every new hire on day one, and to scale it across the entire portfolio.

What Hillpointe Built with Grotto

Hillpointe wanted a partner that could turn natural relationship-builders into effective agents within days, against a clear, repeatable definition of great leasing.

GrottoAI was purpose-built for multifamily and integrated with the systems Hillpointe already ran, so they were able to hit the ground running.

Hillpointe deployed Grotto solutions in their centralized contact center and on-site across their growing property portfolio:

• Real-time Call Guidance: turn-by-turn navigation for every leasing call. Grotto sits on the agent's screen, prompting the best questions to ask, surfacing answers instantly, and walking agents through objections as they arise.
• AI Coaching: A personal coach for every agent. Grotto scores each interaction against Hillpointe's playbook and delivers immediate, personalized feedback.
• Grotto Assist: Calls are recorded through Hillpointe’s existing telephony stack and tours are captured through Grotto's mic hardware. Both land in Hillpointe's PMS and CRM, and are used to auto-populate guest cards, personalize follow-ups and generate automated reporting.

Halfway through the pilot, Hillpointe accelerated deployment across their full portfolio. Leadership was so excited about the results that they even gave Grotto’s team access to the company aircraft to help roll out the product as quickly as possible.

“It took about a five-minute conversation for both our owners to say, ‘Let's do it.’ About 30 to 45 days into the pilot, we went full portfolio.”

Josh Draughn, SVP of Marketing and Centralized Operations, Hillpointe

The Results

Hillpointe’s bet paid off. With GrottoAI, Hillpointe created a system that produced consistent, high-quality tours that drove higher conversion, while increasing speed to close. That represented recovered rent, and ultimately, increased NOI.

Results Summary

Higher conversion for agents that use Grotto

• 27% higher tour-to-lease conversion
• 50% higher tour-to-application conversion

High-scoring tours converted at higher rates, faster, than low-scoring tours

• Agents using Grotto saw 2.5x higher tour-to-lease conversion on their high-scoring vs. low-scoring tours
• On high-scoring tours, agents closed leases within 7 days 2x as often as on low-scoring tours

10x faster ramp time

• Cut contact-center ramp time from 30 days to 3
• Brought on-site agent ramp time down from 90 days to 9

Unprecedented visibility and time savings

• Removing Grotto returns coached behaviors to the un-coached baseline within ~6 weeks
• 80% of tours recorded
• 100+ hours saved on administrative tasks per property per month

Higher Conversion and Speed to Lease

Agents who used Grotto on their tours saw 27% higher tour-to-lease rates and 50% higher tour-to-app rates overall (as compared to agents not engaging with Grotto.) Across the portfolio, this means fewer vacancy days and increased NOI.

We've seen increases in lead-to-tour, lead-to-lease. All of our metrics are up. Our cost per lease is down... It's one team. It's one Hillpointe.”

Josh Draughn, SVP of Marketing and Centralized Operations, Hillpointe

Faster New-hire Onboarding

New leasing agents are now running at Hillpointe's standard before the end of their second week.

Hire someone on March 1, and under the old ramp period, they're not fully contributing until early July, missing half of the leasing season. With Grotto, they're contributing March 12, ensuring they're ready to perform through all of crunch time.

“Two days in, I was doing tours by myself. It's like you have your own personal coach, a safe space to understand where you're strong, where you're weak, and how to improve.”

Lexi DeLeon, Resident Experience Manager, Pointe Grande Brick City

Contact center ramp time dropped from 30 days to 3. Hillpointe can put people who have never worked in the industry on the phone with customers in a matter of days.

“Grotto is a lifesaver. You literally don't have to have any experience. It tells you what to ask, how to say it, and how to build a rapport.”

Andria McFarland, Customer Care Level 3 (Contact Center), Hillpointe

Unprecedented Visibility

Each tour is recorded, scored and then aggregated to reveal strengths and opportunities across the entire workforce. That’s visibility that’s never been available before.

“On the learning and development side, it's helped me significantly. I can see the growth of our team members on site and the growth of our field trainers… We can target specific training and create it around real data.”

Kristine Nguyen, Learning & Development Manager, Hillpointe

Time Savings

Every tour is automatically transcribed, summarized, and used to populate guest cards, follow-ups, and reporting. Agents spend less time on data entry and more time with residents and prospects.

“Having all that data in a concise, convenient way has given me a lot of time back, to coach my leasing specialist, personalize my tours, follow up, and be more present in day-to-day operations.”

Lexi DeLeon, Resident Experience Manager, Pointe Grande Brick City,

Brand Consistency at Scale

Hillpointe set out to give attainable-housing renters a brand they could trust to deliver the same high-quality experience every time. With Grotto, consistency is no longer the thing multifamily can't deliver. At Hillpointe, it's a competitive edge.

“Grotto provides transparency like you've never seen it before. Instant feedback that is actionable and tangible… Touches almost every team, and you'll see increases across the board.”

Josh Draughn, SVP of Marketing and Centralized Operations, Hillpointe