Client

TurboTenant - A vertical SAAS, embedded finance platform that empowers independent landlords to manage and grow their businesses.

Team

Raj, Product Manager
Dani, Lead Engineer
Juan, Engineer
Rodrigo, Engineer
Eugene, Product Marketing

Role

Research
User Testing
UX/UI Design

Problem

Maintenance is regarded by 1 in 5 landlords as one of the most stressful parts of being a landlord. The anticipation of an emergency issue and the costs associated with issues are some of the biggest stressors. TurboTenant had a free maintenance feature that allowed for basic tracking for all users. There was no monetization or update to the feature for its 3-year lifespan.

High-Level Goals

• Improve and monetize maintenance in Q4 2023 with an ARR product, Maintenance Plus. 

• Objective: Surpass $6.1M ARR in December 2023 ​

• KR: Surpass $775k in Premium or Maintenance Billings for Q4.

• ​KR: Achieve an average New Premium or Maintenance Billing of $106 in December.

Survey

In order to understand how landlords were handling maintenance, we analyzed survey data including information such as the top 3 ideal features, how maintenance is handled, and willingness to pay. We discovered the top 2 tasks causing stress for landlords are receiving requests and prioritizing these requests.

Whether landlords used a contractor or maintenance professional depended on their rental count. Landlords with 1-2 properties tended to do work on their own. Landlords with 3+ properties were more likely to hire a maintenance professional and be less price sensitive. 

Maintenance Pain Points

🫥 Lack of features

😑 No tracking ability

😩 No request hierarchy

🧐 Confusing index page

User Interview Insights

From the survey data, I led user interviews to garner feedback about the UX and UI around the marketing of Maintenance Plus, the paid ARR component. In these interviews, we found the largest concerns before purchase were: 

• Contractor/Pro quality and vetting process

• Difference between the Maintenance Plus offering and a home warranty 

• Documentation of the maintenance process for record-keeping 

Iterations & Feedback

Feedback

Working closely with Raj, we showed the earliest iterations to the TurboTenant Product Team for initial feedback. We tried a few different variations for the onboarding and the in-product marketing page for Maintenance Plus. Then, designs were shared with our external partner, Lula, for their feedback.

While we were workshopping early Maintenance Plus designs, we were also working on revamping the free experience for all TurboTenant landlords. More on that in Shipping MVP. 

In-product marketing page v1

Final In-product marketing page

Shipping MVP

TurboTenant Maintenance Plus

Before we were able to release Maintenance Plus, the ARR product, we first released an update to the Maintenance Index and Maintenance Request Overview pages.  From the user feedback we heard, we added the ability to add notes, updates to activities, additional statuses, the ability to star/favorite requests, and increased user experience. 

Maintenance Plus

The final release of Maintenance Plus flew by. We had the in-product marketing page, onboarding, partner statuses, updated activities, billing settings, and more. There was a lot more that we would like to see Maintenance Plus take on, but for MVP we focused on working with Lula's first-ever partner API and getting the basics out there so we could get more user feedback ASAP. 

How does Maintenance Plus make money?

5% of the transaction amount if a pro is dispatched and does work

Lula sends TurboTenant an invoice, auto charge CC on file and pay Lula 1x/month

Annual Subscription fee of $149 (unlimited requests and properties) 

First-Year Projections (Launched mid Dec 2023)

Without accounting for company growth:

$326k - $1.2M in billings in 1 year

$100k- $1.4M in transactional revenue in 1 year