The challenge
In the new era of self-service leasing and personalized shopping experiences, Griffis wanted to further accelerate its efforts to provide an intuitive, visually engaging apartment shopping experience with the key information renters need to do their own research and make a confident decision.
“We use Engrain’s TouchTour and SightMap at all of our communities and wanted to enhance the interactive maps so customers on self-guided tours had the ability to seamlessly navigate communities on their own,” said Christy Gannon, Vice President of Digital Marketing at Griffis Residential.
Enhancing Engrain’s SightMap, revamping TouchTour’s wayfinding
Griffis Residential, founded in 2004, worked with Engrain from the very start to establish a brand and marketing strategy. Engrain has been Griffis’ marketing and technology partner for many years and its products, TouchTour and SightMap, provide the tech-centered consistency Griffis was looking to implement across its portfolio.
“Griffis’ company motto is, ‘it’s about you,’ and both SightMap and TouchTour align with our company goals and support that vision,” Gannon said. “These technologies are really about the customer and providing a more seamless and visually rich apartment leasing and touring experience. That consistency is really important to our brand and Engrain helped us establish that to create a better experience for each potential resident.
”Griffis was an early adopter of SightMap and one of Engrain’s first clients. Since adopting SightMap and TouchTour, Griffis has continued to update the interactive mapping technology to meet prospective resident needs and streamline leasing and touring. Engrain rebuilt Griffis’ Portfolio TouchTour in 2021 with an updated design that streamlined user experience and allowed Griffis to easily onboard new communities. The Griffis redesign was a precursor of TouchTour Flex, Engrain’s newest iteration of TouchTour, that closes the loop on leasing with a seamless interactive leasing and touring experience and dynamic visual context.
“Whenever a new product or software feature is released at Engrain, the Engrain team always meets with Griffis to demo the product and let us try it out,” Gannon said. “I’ve always been very impressed not only with Engrain’s technology, but also their customer service. They’ve worked with us a lot to review the data behind TouchTour and SightMap and help us reimagine our processes with the technology features and upgrades.”
Creating a more consistent, seamless customer journey at all communities
Griffis and Engrain worked together to enhance SightMap across the portfolio. Since updating both SightMap and TouchTour, Gannon said she has appreciated not only the consistency across the Griffis portfolio, but also how the technologies create a higher caliber customer experience with the visual context modern renters desire.
“Our goal is to provide customers with a seamless customer journey when they’re searching for a new apartment home and while they’re on our website,” Gannon said. “SightMap gives them all the information they need to make a buying decision. They get to choose which method is best for them – if they want to look by unit, floor plan, or see a visual map of where the home is located within the community.”
