CLIENT SPOTLIGHT

RENT LIKE A CHAMPION

“We pride ourselves on top-notch customer service, and offering reliable live chat support is a valuable extension of this mission. Our primary goal is to make it as easy as possible for someone to list or rent a home, and live chat provides that instant assistance that neither phone nor email are guaranteed to deliver.”
-BETTY GRAHAM, CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE

Making a play for success

In the world of college sports, Rent Like a Champion (RLAC) has made bold strides. The company works hard to transform and improve the college sports experience by providing premier home rental services to sports fans in cities and towns across the United States. “Many college towns lack the infrastructure to support the tens of thousands of football fans who flock to town on game weekends,” says Mike Doyle, CEO.

The true source of RLAC’s pride, however, comes from the unrivaled customer experiences their team delivers day in and day out. Over 50,000 guests have used RLAC’s home rental services since the company’s creation, and the company manages a growing roster of 3,500+ homeowner listings. As the company and its client base grew, so did the need for more effective customer engagement strategies.

About Rent Like A Champion

Rent Like a Champion (RLAC) started in 2006 in Chicago, Illinois as a student housing company, and has quickly expanded into one of the most popular home vacation rental services in college sports. RLAC now offers weekend home rentals and home listing services in more than 27 college towns around the United States. The RLAC team is comprised of rabid football fans who are passionate about providing the highest levels of customer service to ensure their customers have the best college football experience possible.

The RLAC team needed a solution to help them scale their business and drive rental bookings, all while giving them the necessary tools to continue providing exceptional customer support for both hosts and guests. The Customer Experience team relied on phone and email support in the past, but quickly realized that these modes of communication fell short when it came to their lofty customer engagement goals. RLAC needed to revamp the tools they were using and decided to implement SnapEngage’s live chat software into their overarching strategy.

Betty Graham has worked on RLAC’s Customer Experience team for nearly three years, and notes how live chat supports their efforts to provide immediate, quality support: “We pride ourselves on top-notch customer service, and offering reliable live chat support is a valuable extension of this mission. Our primary goal is to make it as easy as possible for someone to list or rent a home, and live chat provides that instant assistance that neither phone nor email are guaranteed to deliver.”

Stellar service, powered by SnapEngage

RLAC experienced a “seamless” implementation of SnapEngage chat software, which was crucial as the software was implemented during RLAC’s busiest time of the year when even a small hiccup could be detrimental to the business. This positive initial experience during the implementation phase helped Betty’s team and other key decision makers feel confident in their new customer engagement solution.

The Customer Experience team relies on SnapEngage daily to communicate with potential (and active) hosts and guests. They have multiple agents configured in the system, which provides flexibility to schedule shifts based on chat volume and the ability to transfer chats among agents. Priority tiers allow the RLAC team to route chats primarily to frontline support agents while keeping additional agents in backup tiers for assistance during periods of high chat volume. When agents are offline, website visitors can submit offline messages that are automatically routed to the Customer Experience team’s email helpdesk. This ensures timely responses to incoming messages while preventing anything from slipping through the cracks.

One of the primary reasons that RLAC chose SnapEngage over other live chat providers was due to SnapEngage’s robust, native HubSpot integration. The Customer Experience team uses this integration to route all data from SnapEngage chats directly to HubSpot after conversations close. These conversations appear within HubSpot directly in the Contact timeline, giving staff a 360-degree view of lead activity and history to further bolster lead generation efforts.

Custom mapping options within the integration (shown above) give RLAC incredible flexibility when it comes to tailoring the integration to their needs, allowing Betty and her team to send specific types of data to their preferred fields within HubSpot.

Rent Like a Champion lands on a winning strategy

Since implementation in March 2017, Rent Like a Champion has experienced impressive results across the board. These results are hard to ignore. The team completes more successful customer transactions on a daily basis than they were previously, and Betty notes that SnapEngage “helps drive renter checkouts and homeowner signups.” RLAC’s use of SnapEngage has also “resulted in decreased call volume.” This decrease in call volume has streamlined internal efficiencies and frees up agents to assist clients concurrently via chat.

“SnapEngage helps drive renter checkouts and homeowner signups, and has resulted in decreased call volume.”

Website traffic has increased, too, and the Customer Experience team is better equipped than ever to engage these new visitors efficiently and effectively using advanced proactive chat routing. Proactive chat has “aided [RLAC] greatly in engaging qualified users with [RLAC’s] live chat services.”

With an average yearly growth rate of 80%, it’s clear that RLAC has landed on a winning strategy. “The price of the service for the value-add to customers makes perfect sense. It’s very easy to get SnapEngage on your website and the results of customers using the service are instantaneous. Additionally, SnapEngage gives you the tools to constantly improve the experience you’re providing to your customers through analytics, customization, and support.”

Discuss your winning strategy with a solution specialist