We’re currently exploring AI chatbot options across a few platforms - Elise, Yardi’s Chat IQ, Apartment List, Zuma, etc.

For those that have experience with these (or others), which have you seen perform the best?

Also curious how these are actually structured - are they all essentially a combination of a Knowledge Base layered with an LLM, or are some truly more advanced/autonomous in how they learn and respond?

Would love any feedback!

We use EliseAI. We have essential, market rate, and mixed income communities so there has been some learning curve with the affordable piece. I think it works great for some communities, while others struggle with the technology. And I second that the EliseAI team is super responsive and product development is always working to get us what we want.

We use Elise and so far I don’t have complaints. You input the knowledge and it learns as you interact with residents and prospects. The Elise team is also very responsive and open to implement new things and make it work for us!

Would highly recommend checking out Nurture Boss as well! Jessica Biskind

Our clients have had good experiences with Elise and Yardi, and I agree it’s worth adding Nurture Boss to the list.
Whichever one you choose, you have to commit to keeping it updated like Ana mentioned. Otherwise, it tends to fall back on default messages that don’t actually answer renters’ questions.
I’d also set a quarterly review to share conversations with your marketing team. Those chats are gold for helping to inform FAQs and other content for your website, Google Maps listing, and social media.
Good luck!

Check out
Willie Jackson with Union.
Jessica Biskind with Nurture Boss
Michael Wolber with Apartment List

We’ve tested a few and decided to roll out Nurture Boss. We also love the seamless integration directly in our Knock To Do page. They also made the on boarding process super easy..

Add Nurture Boss to the list! Let me know if you’d like to see it.

If you’re considering it for Tours, Tour24’s Tori is awesome. Tour24 is award winning, first in the industry, and holds multiple patents on the technology.
www.tour24.io

We use Knock AI Omni channel on about 80 communities and it’s great

Following and adding:
How about for affordable housing? Which company really gets it?

Zuma is not my preference.

I’ve used both EliseAI and Zuma and I prefer Zuma.

If you are looking at the Yardi solution is it safe to assume your PMS is Voyager? If so some solutions like Elise are great. Integration is important and worth understanding what data flows between the two systems.

Be careful what CRM tool you’re using, we ran into lots of issues with running Funnel and EliseAI together.

We are working with BetterBot on our affordable communities. Some growing pains relative to the challenges created by situations you find in affordable that you don't with others. To me they are much more responsive and easy to work with relative to changes than EliseAI.
Go read some of Lisa Trosien's posts on LI relative to AI and how all of our customers are getting the same AI responses. I know that once we work through the challenges with BB I'm going to have to do some more customization work so that we don't sound like anyone else. Somebody else oversees Elise and our customers are getting the same generic content that everyone else is getting for much of the communication.

Anonymous, here' a few things I would consider before choosing a solution:

• Full-lifecycle, not just first-touch. Most "AI assistants" answer the initial inquiry and then go silent. Leases usually close between touches 4–8 (day 1, 3, 7, lifecycle). That's where a lot of bots fall apart, and frankly almost all of them stop after 7 days.
• Fair Housing & compliance baked in.  Not as a disclaimer, but trained into how it responds. This is table-stakes in multifamily and weirdly rare. You should pressure test this on your own on sites that use specific AI platforms.
• Smart human handoff. The best systems know when to step aside and route to a leasing agent, not just keep the conversation going for engagement's sake.
• Reports opportunity cost, not just engagement. Most tools brag about replies and click rates. The ones worth paying for tell you which leads you should have caught and didn't, so you can actually fix the funnel.
• No annual lock-in / proves itself fast. If a vendor truly believes in the product, they shouldn't need a 12-month contract to capture you. 30 day outs should be included in any contract.
• Is it built by an operator? Usually techy people figure things out, but an operator who knows the space probably has a much more clear view of what you need on a daily basis, and put that into the product from the foundation.