When a pipe bursts in a rental home or an air conditioner fails in the middle of summer, tenants expect quick action. Property management companies often rely on call centers to handle these urgent maintenance requests, but keeping up with the volume while maintaining a high level of service is a challenge. That's where EZ Repair Hotline steps in.
Founded by Andy Shinn, EZ Repair Hotline specializes in coordinating maintenance for residential property management companies. Acting as an after-hours emergency call center, the company fields maintenance requests from tenants and ensures vendors are dispatched efficiently. But as EZ Repair Hotline grew, so did the complexity of managing thousands of work orders across multiple property management software platforms.
"We work with many different property management companies, and each one has its own software," says Andy. "Even within the same platform, configurations can vary. We were manually entering work orders, which took up a lot of time."
To streamline their operations, the company turned to Zapier and AI to automate their workflows, allowing them to handle higher volumes while maintaining their quality of service.
EZ Repair Hotline's results, by the numbers
Hundreds of work orders are processed daily with automated formatting and data entry.
Significant time savings achieved, allowing the team to focus on higher-value tasks.
Faster response times for tenants, improving customer satisfaction.
15-20% business growth without additional staffing.
AI and Zapier can make complex processes feel effortless: with automation at its core, EZ Repair Hotline continues to redefine efficiency in property maintenance.
About EZ Repair Hotline
Company size: 10-50 employees
Industry: Marketplace
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Standardizing work orders across platforms
One of EZ Repair Hotline's biggest challenges was processing maintenance work orders from various property management systems, each with different data formats. Previously, employees had to manually read emails and input work orders into their internal system.
With Zapier, EZ Repair Hotline automated this process. "We use AI products and Zapier's formatter to standardize incoming work orders," Andy explains. "Regardless of the software it comes from, our system now receives a uniform format."
Here's how their Zap works:
A work order request comes in via email.
Zapier extracts key details, like address, tenant information, and issue description.
AI reformats the request into a consistent structure.
The formatted data is sent to EZ Repair Hotline's internal system, which can then read the work order in a standardized way, ensuring seamless processing.
This automation significantly reduced manual workload, allowing our team to focus on higher-value tasks. We now intake hundreds of work orders per day without manual input.
Andy
AI-powered tenant communication and troubleshooting
Handling maintenance requests goes beyond data entry—many issues require troubleshooting before dispatching a vendor. "A lot of problems don't actually need a technician," Andy says. "A tenant might just need to reset a breaker or check their thermostat."
To improve tenant communication and reduce unnecessary vendor dispatches, EZ Repair Hotline leveraged Zapier Chatbots to build an interactive home repair troubleshooter. Tenants are directed to this tool, where they can enter details about their issues and receive troubleshooting steps along with instructional videos for common maintenance problems.
In addition to the self-serve chatbot, EZ Repair Hotline built a Zapier workflow that:
Pulls incoming work order details.
Uses Zapier Chatbots to generate a human-like response, offering troubleshooting tips.
Includes relevant instructional videos if applicable.
Delays sending the message slightly to make it feel more natural.
"We make sure the messages sound like they're from a real person," Andy explains. "We even filter out AI-generated responses that don't make sense, so we're always sending quality replies."
The result? Tenants receive quick, effective guidance, reducing unnecessary vendor dispatches and saving property managers money.
Automating work order follow-ups with AI
With hundreds of open work orders at any given time, EZ Repair Hotline needed a way to track progress and determine the next steps without constant manual oversight. Their solution: an AI-driven follow-up system.
A Zap adds all open work orders into a Google Sheet.
EZ Repair Hotline's in-house robot "Rosie" extracts details and takes a screenshot of each order.
AI analyzes the status and recommends next steps, such as scheduling a follow-up or closing the request.
Zapier then updates EZ Repair Hotline's internal system accordingly, reducing the need for human intervention.
This automation has been huge for them. "We used to need multiple employees just to check statuses," says Andy. "Now, Zapier and AI handle it for us, freeing up our team to focus on more complex tasks."
The impact: Scaling efficiently without increasing staff
With AI and automation, EZ Repair Hotline has significantly increased its efficiency without needing to expand its workforce. "Over the past 18 months, our business has grown by 15-20%, but we haven't needed to hire additional staff," Andy notes. "Zapier helps us do more with less while improving consistency and accuracy."
Looking ahead, EZ Repair Hotline is working on automating vendor assignments, further reducing manual work and response times.
We're just scratching the surface of what's possible. With Zapier, we can keep growing without limits.
Andy
