In the Swedish real estate services market, Vallmo and Viveo have emerged as digital pioneers by integrating XMReality’s video technology into their operations. It all started when Susanna Ehrström was in the process of launching Vallmo, a company offering facility management services, and encountered XMReality. She immediately identified the technology's potential in the facility management segment, and instead of just implementing the solution at Vallmo, she and her team set their aim higher. (Want to read the story in Swedish? Just go here.)
Identifying Challenges: A Digitally Immature Market
The Swedish real estate sector is encountering several digitalization challenges, including the need to update communication methods with its tenants. Many companies continue to use traditional customer service approaches, relying primarily on phone calls for troubleshooting. While effective in some cases, this method can sometimes lead to misunderstandings and extended resolution times. By exploring more efficient alternatives, companies have the opportunity to enhance customer satisfaction and improve their capacity to scale services and ticket handling effectively.
The need for more dynamic and interactive customer service solutions was apparent, and when Susanna came across XMReality’s solution, it was the perfect tool to enhance customer service within the real estate market. This led to the formation of yet another company, Viveo, that partnered with XMReality to become a reseller.
Susanna explains that they decided to resell the technology through Viveo in order to avoid conflicts of interest.
- I saw great potential for this type of technology in the real estate market and beyond, and we didn't want to limit ourselves to using it only at Vallmo. However, Vallmo's purpose is not to resell software. That doesn't align with the company's offering and purpose. That’s why we also decided to start Viveo, which is solely dedicated to reselling the software as a partner to XMReality.
Finding Solutions: Video Communication
This partnership allowed Viveo to become a reseller of XMReality licenses, while its sister company, Vallmo, started using the licenses within its own operations. Vallmo offers assistance from its property caretakers along with highly skilled customer service personnel who can handle rental administration, call center outsourcing, and other property-related services 24/7. By adopting XMReality’s video technology, Vallmo could expand its offering to include interactive and effective customer service through video interaction.
XMReality’s video tool is an integrated part of Vallmo’s service operations today. The technology allows property service agents to see what problem the tenant is facing through live video feeds. Since Vallmo is employed by several different clients to help manage their customer and tenant support, the solution is now used to support properties at several locations in Sweden.
Realizing Benefits: A Discovery of Use Cases
Jasmin Yilmaz, who has been responsible for the roll-out of XMReality at Vallmo, shares that prior to using video, they faced several communication challenges when tenants called to make an error report:
- First, the agent interprets what the tenant reports, which is later interpreted by the technician who is sent out to solve the issue. Usually, a lot of information becomes lost or simply left out in that process, which leads to delayed issue resolution.
By using video calls from XMReality, the support agent can now instead visually capture the details of the error, which has drastically cut down miscommunication and improved resolution time.
Vallmo has received a very positive response from tenants on the introduction of video communication. Jasmin explains that many tenants now take the chance to report more things when they are on a video call.
- When they see how easy it is for the agent to visually capture information during the call, the tenants often want to show more things they are thinking about reporting. This is great since we can then solve several things during one call-out or make notes about future maintenance needs. It helps us become more proactive with property management.
In addition to error reporting, remote video calls are also used for inspections and quality assurance. For example, when one tenant is moving out from a rental apartment, Vallmo can remotely inspect and record the apartment's condition to ensure it’s ready for a new tenant.
However, the implementation of XMReality at Vallmo was not completely without challenges. Thanks to its ease of use, Susanna and Jasmin were confident about rolling out the technology to support agents and tenants. But quite soon, they discovered a new hurdle—many tenants weren’t at home when they called in to report an issue—making the video technology redundant. They managed to overcome this by leveraging the possibility of scheduling calls with XMReality. It required a shift in their processes, but today, the tenants have the option to either start a video call directly if they are at home or schedule one for a time that’s convenient for them.
Continuing to Innovate: Setting New Standards
Vallmo’s journey from identifying industry-wide challenges to becoming a digitalization leader demonstrates the transformative power of entrepreneurial individuals in combination with smart technology. Above all, it sets a new standard for customer support within the real estate industry.
Looking ahead, Vallmo, supported by Viveo and XMReality, plans to expand the use of video technology further in additional aspects of property management. Their goal is to continue leading the charge in digital transformation within their industry, exploring new ways to enhance customer interaction and operational efficiency.
