Upgrade Your Property Management Call Handling with Custom Voice AI
Custom-built voice AI agents provide superior call handling by integrating directly with your specific property management software. They handle maintenance requests, leasing inquiries, and complaint triage with context standard systems lack.
The system's scope depends on your current software, like AppFolio or Yardi, and the number of call types you need to automate. A system that only creates maintenance tickets is a 2-week build. A more advanced agent that also qualifies new leads and checks rent payment status takes longer.
We built a voice AI for a 15-person property management firm handling 300 units. They were missing 20% of after-hours maintenance calls. The system went live in 3 weeks, reduced missed emergency calls to zero, and now logs over 50 maintenance tickets per month automatically into their AppFolio instance.
What Problem Does This Solve?
Standard interactive voice response (IVR) systems are the first step for most property managers. They route calls with a simple menu, but cannot collect information. When a tenant calls with a leak, they still have to wait for a human operator, even if it's just to leave a message that gets transcribed hours later.
Some firms try generic call center AI platforms like Talkdesk or Five9. These tools can understand natural language but are not designed for property management. They can't connect to the AppFolio API to create a structured maintenance ticket with the correct priority and unit number. Instead, they just email a transcript to a general inbox, forcing your staff to perform manual data entry and triage anyway.
A 25-person firm using a traditional answering service for after-hours calls provides a clear failure scenario. A tenant calls at 10 PM about a burst pipe. The operator takes a message and emails the on-call tech. The email is missed for an hour, leading to significant water damage. The answering service costs $800/month, not including the cost of these delayed responses.
How Does It Work?
We start by mapping your call flows and integrating directly with your Property Management Software (PMS) API, whether it is AppFolio, Yardi, or another platform. We use Python with the httpx library for asynchronous API calls to ensure fast interactions. We analyze your 10 most frequent tenant requests to build the initial conversation logic for the agent.
The core of the system is a FastAPI application that uses Anthropic's Claude 3 Sonnet API for language understanding. When a call comes in through a provider like Twilio, the audio is transcribed and sent to our application. Claude's function-calling capability identifies the tenant's intent, like 'create_maintenance_ticket', and extracts all necessary details. This entire AI processing step completes in under 800ms.
The FastAPI application is packaged into a Docker container and deployed on AWS Lambda. This serverless architecture provides high availability and scales automatically, costing under $50 per month to handle up to 10,000 calls. We connect this backend to a Twilio phone number, which handles the speech-to-text and text-to-speech functions, creating a fluid conversational experience for the tenant.
Every call transcript, AI decision, and PMS API interaction is written to a Supabase Postgres database using structlog for queryable logs. We configure CloudWatch alarms to send a Slack notification if the API error rate exceeds 1% or if latency surpasses 2 seconds. This provides immediate visibility into system performance and allows for proactive maintenance.
What Are the Key Benefits?
Handle Urgent Calls in 60 Seconds, Not 60 Minutes
The system identifies emergencies like leaks, creates a P1 ticket in your PMS, and alerts the on-call team in under one minute.
Stop Paying Monthly Answering Service Fees
Replace a $500-$1500 per month service with a fixed-cost build and under $50/month in AWS and Twilio usage fees.
You Receive The Complete Codebase
We deliver the full Python source code to your company's GitHub repository. There is no vendor lock-in or recurring subscription cost.
A Real-Time Dashboard of Tenant Issues
A Supabase-backed dashboard shows call volumes, common complaint types, and resolution times, revealing trends before they become problems.
True Integration with AppFolio and Yardi
The agent uses official APIs to create structured tickets and update records, not just send an email transcript to an inbox.
What Does the Process Look Like?
System Audit (Week 1)
You provide API access to your PMS and a list of common call types. We deliver a detailed workflow map showing exactly how the AI will handle each call.
Core Agent Build (Week 2)
We build the main conversation logic and API integrations. You receive a private phone number to test the agent with pre-scripted scenarios.
Deployment and Testing (Week 3)
We deploy the system on AWS Lambda and connect it to your main phone line. We provide a runbook with instructions for monitoring and common troubleshooting.
Monitoring and Handoff (Weeks 4-6)
We monitor all live calls for two weeks, tuning the AI's responses based on real-world interactions. You receive final documentation and full ownership.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How much does a custom voice AI system cost?
- Pricing is scoped per project. A system for a single property handling only maintenance requests is a 2-week build. A multi-property system that also handles leasing inquiries and rent payment questions is a 4-week build. We provide a fixed-price quote after our discovery call. Book a discovery call at cal.com/syntora/discover to discuss pricing.
- What happens if the AI doesn't understand a tenant?
- If the agent fails to understand the request after two attempts, it automatically transfers the call to a human agent or a designated voicemail. The full call transcript and the AI's confusion point are logged and sent to your team for review, which helps us improve the logic over time.
- How is this different from using a service like CallRail with AI features?
- CallRail's AI analyzes calls for marketing attribution; it doesn't interact with the caller or perform actions. Our system is an interactive agent. It gathers information from the tenant and uses it to create tickets directly in your property management software, like AppFolio, something a call tracking tool cannot do.
- Can the agent handle different languages?
- Yes. We can configure the system to detect a caller's language and respond accordingly. The underlying Claude and Twilio services support dozens of languages, including Spanish. We scope this during the discovery phase as it adds about 3 days to the build for each additional language.
- What if we switch our property management software later?
- Because you own the code, you can adapt the system. The core conversational logic remains the same. We would only need to build a new integration module to connect to the new PMS API. This is typically a small, 1-week follow-on project, not a complete rebuild from scratch.
- How does the AI handle angry or frustrated tenants?
- We program the agent with specific logic for de-escalation. If it detects raised voices or keywords indicating high frustration, it can adopt a more empathetic tone and is configured to immediately offer a transfer to a human manager. This prevents a poor automated experience from escalating a tenant issue.
Related Solutions
Ready to Automate Your Small Business Operations?
Book a call to discuss how we can implement ai automation for your small business business.
Book a Call