Voice became Smartlock's number one booking channel

Smartlock Self Storage put AI on the two jobs that scale the worst: answering every call and chasing every past-due balance. Voice went from one channel among several to become the engine behind most of their new rentals, while collections kept running quietly in the background. Same team, no new hires.

252

sales calls in May

~15%

sales-call conversion

13-15

locations

Oct 2025

voice went live

The focus · Voice booking

The problem most growing operators miss

01Every unanswered call is a lost lease

Smartlock was scaling fast, and the phone was the steepest curve. Inbound sales calls ramped from a near standstill at launch to 252 in May, the busiest the phones have ever been. The math is unforgiving: across the industry about 40% of storage calls go unanswered, and 60% of renters rent from the first facility that answers.

02AI carries volume, people carry judgment

Voice runs as the front line for every inbound call, across every location, every hour. It answers, captures intent, and moves qualified renters straight into the booking flow. Service and account questions are handled or routed, and anything outside its lane goes to a person, so the team spends its time where judgment matters.

Inside the sales calls

Not every call is a sales call, so measure the ones that are

Counting every touchpoint makes conversion look like ~4%. Measured against actual sales calls, roughly 1 in 7 became a rental in May.

Inbound sales calls by month

166

Jan

206

Feb

176

Mar

198

Apr

252

May

Sales-agent calls, 2026. From near zero at the October launch to 252 in May.

Sales calls, not all calls

Sales calls handled in May252
Rentals booked from them38
Sales-call conversion, May~15%
Peak conversions in one week (early May)15

Sales calls, not collections or service traffic, are the denominator. Roughly 1 in 7 became a rental.

The results

Voice went from a channel they answered to one that sells

88%

of May's rentals were attributed to Voice AI

Last-touch attribution. Voice went from one channel among several to the source of nearly every new rental in the month.

voice-attributed rentals, Mar to May

252

sales calls handled in May

~15%

sales-call conversion in May

Voice-attributed rentals by month

March

April

May

Last-touch attribution, 2026. Weekly conversions ran 1-4 through winter, peaked at 15 in early May, and have held around 5-7 since.

By the numbers

Month	Voice rentals	Share
March	20	91%
April	20	83%
May	38	88%
Quarter	78	≈$5,550

Share is voice as a percent of all attributed rentals that month. About $5,550 in new monthly recurring rent added through voice across the quarter.

And in the background · Collections

Past-due balances that get worked without a collections team

Smartlock has no dedicated collections staff, so the AI does the chasing: outbound voice and SMS on past-due balances, with an auto receipt the moment a tenant commits to pay. In the first month it was on, delinquent accounts fell from 167 to 125, about a 25% drop, and roughly $6,000 in past-due balances was recovered.

Delinquent accounts

167

Start

131

~3 wks

125

~1 mo

About a 25% reduction in delinquent accounts in roughly a month.

How the past-due workload runs

Past-due balances recovered~$6,000
Fewer delinquent accounts in a month-25%
AI calls ending in a payment plan15-23%
Answered calls transferred to a person7.6%

Almost entirely automated. A person only steps in when the tenant asks for one.

$700/ad

Skipping auction ads for tenants who will pay

Auctions require a paid newspaper ad, about $700 a clip. When a tenant tells the agent they plan to pay, their name is pushed daily to a "swivl Notes" tab in Andy's sheet, so he can skip the ad spend on people who were going to pay in a couple of days.

Beyond booking and balances

The same platform, closing the smaller gaps too

Review auto-replies

swivl auto-replies to 4- and 5-star Google reviews. Average response time collapsed from days to near-instant across the spring.

0.6

Feb

0.9

Mar

0.5

Apr

0.3

May

<0.1

Jun

Average response time in days.

spot.is QR codes

Self-serve spot.is QR codes rolled out across all 13 locations, giving walk-up prospects an instant path to rent and pay without a phone call at all.

Part of closing the FMS gaps for Smartlock even without spot.is payments active, alongside the auction-tracking sheet.

Voice books rentals around the clock and handles the calls our team used to chase. The collections agent keeps after the past-due balances we were never going to chase ourselves, and flags who plans to pay so I'm not buying auction ads I don't need. We step in only when it actually matters.

Andrew MaischCOO at Smartlock Self Storage

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Andrew Maisch

COO at Smartlock Self Storage

Andy Maisch has been with Smartlock Self Storage for more than 3 years, rising from Technical Operations Lead to, now, Chief Operating Officer as of April 2026. It's a fast, ground-up climb, he understands the operation from the tenant-facing side up through executive strategy.

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