Gavin Shields and Dean discuss how self-storage will shift online. Right now under 10% of customers sign up without talking to anyone. That number could hit 50% in 6 to 8 years. Most customers are 45 to 65 and unfamiliar with self storage, so businesses should offer online booking to skip the back-and-forth.
Questions this video answers
Below 10% (speaker's estimate).
20–25% (speaker's estimate).
About 50% (speaker's estimate).
Maybe 10–15 years (speaker's estimate).
About 1 in 10.
Chapters
The amount of customers that sign up without ever speaking to you, no phone calls, no emails, is I'd say probably below 10% which you know is tiny. But in, in two years time that'll be 20, 25%. In six to eight years that might be 50, 50. And I'm sure, I'm sure you can relate, Gavin, and especially you, Dean. If you ever get a customer who goes on your website, signs up, you never hear from them, you never speak to them. When that booking comes through and you receive the email, it's like the best thing in the world. You can't literally have a smile on my face and I can't hide it. So that is full automation. Amazing. That's what we want. But when are we going to be there, you know, and when we like the US in maybe 10, 15 years time. So for now, whether it's yourself or your team, you do have to have well trained people who can help the customer answer their questions. There's still loads of people aren't familiar with self storage. I think it's maybe 1 in 10 have used self storage before. So you've got to assume that most people need these questions answered in this assistance. However, when it comes to the actual booking side of it, if they are a more tech savvy person and they want to do the process online, we just send them a link to our store, a booking page or we, you know, they're already on the website, they go in, plug in their details, add their cards, job done, excellent. The ID and contracts done after. If they aren't that sort of person, which obviously the normal self storage customer tends to be maybe 45 to 65, maybe not tech savvy in that scenario it's fine, we can do it on the phone, take their name, take their car details, authorize the payment and then either guide them through the rest of it or assist them to do the rest of it our end. And either way you're completing the book in there and then, which is a mistake I was making before sending them away, they're never actually completing the booking, but this way, either way you can complete the booking your end or their end and it's just, it's got rid of that whole 15, 20 minute process in the office or free three or four emails back and forth. Now it's just done there and then five minutes later they're booked, you've got a customer.
