Why not answering the phone is costing you owners

Both the PM Trends Report and PropertyManagement.com dropped some stunning numbers from surveys conducted with property owners in the past month. The takeaway: answering the phone is not just important, it's a business imperative.

The most shocking stats from surveys of property owners:

• 98% of owners expect to reach you. At all times.
• 65% of owners expect after-hours access for all or most situations—not just emergencies.
• 5X more likelihood of owners not recommending you if they consistently reach voicemail when they call you.
• 69% gap in net promoter score (NPS) between owners who can get an answer vs owners who reach voicemail.
• 38% of owners expect immediate pickup. 70% expect a callback within 30 minutes.
• #1 driver of PM satisfaction is communication quality.

“The bar isn’t 24/7 live answering. It’s reliable responsiveness — even automated acknowledgment signals availability. Only 2% of landlords say ‘never.' If your phones go dark at 5pm, you’re misaligned with 98% of your clients." — 2026 PM Trends Report

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The message is clear: “leave a voicemail" is not a solution.

Out of 445 surveyed owners, PropertyManagement.com found that 33% of the cohort reported always reaching the voicemail of their property manager. 37% of those respondents were detractors—not willing to refer their property management company—compared to just 7.4% of respondents who could reach their property manager on the phone.

On the flipside, only 40% of respondents who reported reaching voicemail would be willing to be promoters of their property management company—compared to 79% of respondents who could reach their property manager on the phone.

“An answered phone is worth 69 points of NPS. Nothing else we measure comes close — not maintenance, not leasing, not accounting." — PropertyManagement.com, The Voicemail Tax Report

Furthermore, responsiveness is the biggest indicator of a company's NPS. At the company level, phone answer rate correlated with NPS at r = 0.82. Every company above 85% pickup had an NPS of +73 or better. And every company below 65% had an NPS of +46 or worse.

The spread on this one factor—do you have a solution for answering the phone—is not just meaningful, it tells you everything you need to know about how critical responsiveness is to the business, and what it says to your owners about how you're running the business.

Where does voice AI come into this?

Both reports quantify the impact of responsiveness. So how does a voice AI agent help with this?

Here's what we're seeing in the field:

1. Set up rules to automatically transfer owners—give them preferred treatment without having to hit a phone tree.
2. Give them an outlet to speak about their issue, even if no human is available right now to answer.
3. Show them you're logging everything, and that the system is improving not just answer rates, but faster follow up.
4. Frees up time from routine tenant inquiries to have more time to spend on owner inquiries.
5. Ensures tenants also get addressed, rapid answers, and follow ups for better retention.

An AI receptionist isn't just a layer between you and the customer. Implemented correctly, and an AI receptionist can help you meet owner expectations. It frees up time so that you have a higher likelihood of answering, helps to route calls to the right team member, and ensures the details of their inquiry are logged for action even if you're not able to answer.

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What can you do to improve?

These stats make it clear that answering the phone must be a priority. So what's your next step?

1. Benchmark your pickup rate. This is simple: download your last few months phone logs, and analyze your answer vs missed call vs voicemail rate. In the words of PropertyManagement.com, this is not a vanity metric, it's a leading indicator. “Measure your pickup rate like you measure occupancy."
2. Secret shop your own office line during office hours and after hours. What's the experience like?
3. Get a strategy in place to answer every call 24/7. Even if it's an automated message with a process for rapid follow up, you need a plan that's not just “leave a voicemail."
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Sources: PropertyManagement.com, “The Voicemail Tax: TrueMatch™ Owner Signal Report No. 001" (2026) — 445 verified responses from 4,805 owners across 20 property management companies. LeadSimple, RL Property Management, and Harris Poll, “PM Trends Report 2026" — a survey of 500 landlords.

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