The great multifamily amenity wars have moved beyond hard surfaces, stainless steel appliances and wood floors to focus on the resident experience. Hospitality and luxury lifestyle touches like health club worthy fitness centers, pet washes, demo kitchens, coffee bars and wine cellars are being further enhanced with innovative technology. The newest trend in resident amenities is frictionless security that enables more convenient secure access for residents and the ability to interact with these bespoke spaces.
What is Frictionless Security?
Let’s start by defining “frictionless.” According to Merriam Webster, the term “frictionless” is defined as “achieved with or involving little difficulty; effortless.” Frictionless security, therefore, should be a convenient and non-intrusive experience. That type of experience starts with the simple notion that one credential should work everywhere a resident is permitted to go within a community. It means that each secured access location should be managed centrally through a single system and database, including resident permissions for each of these areas. Access schedules should be able to be adjusted at any time to accommodate the needs of property management, maintenance staff, or residents themselves. Usage and audit reports should be easy to generate and refine, providing rich and insightful data to improve the way spaces are utilized and secured. And, in today’s age, frictionless security means extending access and management functionality to mobile devices, as well.
Today, 73% of Americans own a smartphone according to Pew Research Center data1, signaling an ever-growing consumer appetite to communicate, collaborate, conduct commerce, and feel connected from anywhere at any time. You can book an airline ticket, check-in and board a flight, access cloud-based software, make a reservation and order a ride - all from your smartphone. It’s not surprising that the freedom of a mobile experience is extending to the multifamily world and changing how residents interact – and expect to interact - with their community.
In response to the proliferation of smartphone technology and in the quest for delivering differentiated experiences, Kastle Systems has introduced KastleResident, a smart IOT-based mobile security platform, to increase building security while enhancing resident convenience.
The KastleResident mobile app serves as a digital credential that can replace or backup a physical credential such as a key fob or card. If a resident wants to go for a run or head out for the evening without carrying their physical keys, the mobile credential is the perfect solution. It can be used everywhere a physical credential or key fob does, and it’s securely embedded in a device that none of us want to be without. A resident can drive into the garage, enter through the lobby, call an elevator, enter the fitness center, and go inside their apartment with just a smartphone.
Community engagement is enhanced with the KastleResident app because it serves as another communication channel to complement the typical email announcements from property management - which oftentimes wind up in spam folders. Immediate in-app notifications can alert residents to social events, maintenance services and other information about the community.
Community engagement can also encompass how residents interact with their spaces. KastleResident automatically mines and displays access control data, revealing insights that can delight residents and property managers alike. With high-tech in-app occupancy charts, innovative spaces seem even more high-tech, further differentiating your property. This glimpse service empowers residents to do things like see how busy the fitness center is or find out how many people are on the roof deck – all from within the KastleResident app. This helps them decide if they want to squeeze in a workout or socialize with neighbors.
KastleResident delivers the freedom for residents and community staff to remotely unlock doors for visitors, delivery people, or locked out roommates and residents. Fortifying this capability with biometric authentication provides peace of mind and an important confirmation of intent. So, whether it’s a resident remotely letting a delivery person into the lobby and onto the elevator - without leaving their apartment, or a property manager rescuing a locked-out resident by remotely granting access in the middle of the night - without getting out of bed, the remote unlock feature turns a recurring inconvenience into a convenience for community managers and residents alike.
It’s certainly an exciting time to be in the multifamily industry. Frictionless security has taken root and so have the differentiated resident experiences fueled by imagination. Aided by the rapid evolution of smartphone technology, the pace of amenity innovation is accelerating, helping forward-thinking multifamily communities raise the bar and change the rules to win in today’s amenity wars.
For more information, contact your Kastle Account Manager, email info@kastle.com.
1 Mobile Fact Sheet.” PewInternet.org. Pew Research Center, 5 Feb. 2018.