Tenant Maintenance Request Intake and Triage Automation

What this service does, in plain terms

Most repair problems in rented property start as a short message sent at a bad time. A tenant writes at night that the kitchen tap is dripping, or sends a photo of a ceiling stain on a Sunday. Someone on your team then has to read it, work out whether it matters, ask the missing questions, open a record and chase a vendor. Each of those steps is small. Together they delay the response to the one message that did matter.

This service puts an AI worker in front of that queue. It receives the request, asks the questions your team would ask, applies the triage rules you have written down, and creates the record. It then tells the tenant what happens next and hands the job to the vendor or person you have approved. It does not decide what is wrong with the building, and it does not choose a plumber on its own judgement. Those decisions remain with you.

Who this is for

The service suits any operation that receives repair requests from tenants and has written rules, even if the rules live in a manager's head today. A five-person letting agency handling a few hundred doors and a corporate group managing thousands of staff housing units can both use the same design. What changes is the number of properties, the number of systems the worker must connect to, and how many people sit on the on-call rota.

It is a good fit when requests arrive through more than one channel, when the same questions get asked again and again, and when the owner can name the situations that count as an emergency. It is a poor fit when there are no written rules at all. In that case the first piece of work is writing them, and the audit will say so.

What is included

• An intake flow for WhatsApp, SMS, email and a web form, with the same questions asked on each channel.
• Collection of the unit or address, the issue type, photos and a yes or no answer on whether water, gas or electricity is affected.
• A triage table built from your rules, with each category marked as emergency, urgent or routine.
• Creation of a work order in your existing property system, or a new row in your spreadsheet, with the tenant's words, photos and timestamps attached.
• An acknowledgement to the tenant that states the category and the next step, and a clear note when a person will follow up.
• Dispatch or queueing of the vendor you have approved for that issue type, with a log of each message sent.
• An on-call alert path for emergencies, with the request details in the message.
• A short written handover that shows your team what the worker did, what is waiting and what needs a decision.

How it runs

1. Audit. We review how requests arrive today, which systems hold the records, who approves spending and who sits on call. The output is a short list of what can be automated and what must stay manual. The audit is the free step, and it is where you can book a free automation audit.
2. Process map. We map each request from first message to closed job. You approve the triage rules in writing, including the examples that count as emergencies and the cases that are always routed to a person.
3. Build. We set up the channels, the questions, the triage table, the connection to your work order system or spreadsheet, and the vendor and on-call routing. Each path is tested with sample messages before any tenant sees it.
4. Run. The worker operates on live requests under the rules you approved. Anything it cannot place with confidence is passed to a person rather than guessed.
5. Support. We review the logs with you on a fixed schedule, adjust the rules when your portfolio changes, and fix any channel or connection that breaks.

How triage works

Triage is only as good as the rules behind it. The table below shows the kind of structure we build with you. The categories and examples are placeholders for the rules your business writes. Your own rules replace them.

Two points deserve attention. First, the table relies on tenants describing what they see. A tenant may call a damp patch a small issue when it is spreading mould in a bedroom. Guidance for landlords in England treats damp and mould as health matters, and advises treating every such report as urgent where children, older residents or people with health conditions live in the home. Your rules should say that clearly. Second, the worker should never downgrade a request on its own. If a message is unclear, the safe default is to route it to a person.

Legal context for UK-based landlords

In England, the Homes (Fitness for Human Habitation) Act 2018 came into force on 20 March 2019. It requires that rented homes are fit for habitation at the start of a tenancy and throughout it. Landlords also have an implied right to enter the home to inspect, but only at reasonable times and with at least 24 hours' written notice to the occupier. The intake record your worker creates, with timestamps and photos, can help you show when a report arrived and what you did next. It does not replace your own repair obligations or your legal advice. The official guidance is published on GOV.UK. This explains the rule in general terms; it is not legal or tax advice for your case.

What the client provides

The service depends on information only you can supply. Before the build starts, you will need a list of properties and units with their address format, the system or spreadsheet where work orders live, and a named contact for each vendor. You will also need written triage rules, a named on-call rota with backup names, and your spending limits for each property or owner. You should decide which channels tenants already use and whether you want to keep an existing phone line for people who cannot use messaging. Finally, you need to confirm that your tenants' contact details and consent for messaging are held in a form you can share with the worker.

Typical timeline

For a single property team with one work order system, the usual pattern is about two weeks for the audit and process map, about two to four weeks for the build and testing, and one to two weeks of supervised running before the rules are handed back to you for routine oversight. Larger portfolios with several systems, several owners and several vendor panels take longer, often eight weeks or more. These figures are planning estimates. The audit confirms the real timeline for your properties.

What this service does not cover

The worker does not diagnose faults. It cannot see a leak, smell gas or judge whether a ceiling is sagging. Photos help a person decide, but they are not a substitute for an inspection by a qualified tradesperson. The worker does not choose vendors by quality or price, and it does not approve any spend above your limit. It does not enter a property, sign off a repair or confirm that a job has been done to standard. Those steps stay with your team and your vendors.

The worker also has limits in messaging. WhatsApp allows free-form replies only within a 24-hour window that starts when the customer writes to you. Outside that window, messages must use pre-approved templates, so the worker's follow-ups depend on those templates being approved in advance. Meta's pricing for business messaging changes over time. One 2026 guide reports that from 1 October 2026, free-text service replies will carry a charge after a monthly allowance per business phone number, so check Meta's current WhatsApp pricing page before you choose a channel. Phone calls are not handled unless we build that path separately. Tenants who do not use messaging will still need a human contact.

Finally, automation is not worth it for every operation. A portfolio with a handful of units, a single trusted handyman and a manager who reads every message within the hour may gain little. The audit will say so if that is your situation.

Next step

If your team spends mornings sorting repair messages, the audit is the right place to start. Book a free automation audit and we will show you which requests can be sorted automatically, which must go to a person, and what the first build would look like.