Building A Solution For Self-Storage

For those familiar with the self-storage industry, it’s no surprise just how widespread storage facilities have become. According to the 2023 Self-Storage Almanac, there are more than 51,000 self-storage facilities across the U.S., surpassing the total number of locations operated by many major fast-food chains.

In Zion’s introduction, Christian chatted about the demand for call answering solutions as the self-storage industry grows. With the growth over the years, Zion found itself facing a challenge that few traditional contact centers face.

At the core of the problem to address was how to deliver a streamlined call answering solution for hundreds of individual facilities – each with its own phone number, policies, and workflows while making every call feel as if it is being answered by a dedicated team member from the facility.

Most businesses using platforms like Talkdesk operate as a single entity. Calls come into the business and are routed to the appropriate department or internal team. A relatively simple call routing path.

Zion’s model is fundamentally different. Christian elaborated on the groundwork for the system to recognize which facility the call is coming from, pull the correct information, and route the call to an agent who is trained on that facility’s unique needs. The complexity didn’t stop there. We recognize each facility has different call routing needs based on operational preferences. Some operators want calls to ring to them or an on-site manager and only roll over to Zion if the manager is unavailable. Zion’s solution needed to accommodate all of these scenarios without creating delays, missed calls, or a disjointed tenant experience.

Solving this problem required more than just traditional call routing. Zion addressed these needs with a flexible tech stack that could expand with the growing needs of self-storage. Along with additional integrations with major facility management softwares, Zion built a call answering/remote management model built specifically for self-storage operators.

Optimizing Through AI

Quality Assurance and Call Grading

To put this workload into perspective for a common scenario for many self-storage facilities.

In the first week of a new month, one of our smaller clients, a 280-unit facility, received 30 calls. Many calls during the first of the month are routine billing questions or late fee inquiries. Now, imagine that the facility owner received a concerning online review from the tenant claiming their billing question was handled poorly during the call. Naturally, the owner wants an answer and reaches out to our Client Relations team to ask if it is possible to review the call recording to understand what happened.

Before advanced AI Quality tools, this would have been a time-consuming task equating to the Zion team manually sifting through calls to find the correct interaction.

Today, the process looks very different. Zion now reviews 100% of calls automatically! We can also search for keywords like “billing,” the tenant’s name, or even the specific agent who handled the call. Within minutes, the exact call in question is identified and reviewed.

In 2025 alone, Zion handled more than 1.2 million calls. Reviewing that volume manually would require a large, dedicated quality assurance team. Instead, AI now reviews every call automatically, analyzing recordings at scale and delivering actionable insights based on a carefully built grading framework that we built specifically for self-storage calls.

Over time, the AI learns how to consistently apply this framework across all calls, allowing our team to quickly spot trends and areas for improvement. Whether it’s identifying an individual agent who may need additional coaching, a broader training opportunity across the team, or a facility-specific issue, the data brings clarity without guesswork.

One example shared during the webinar involved a facility experiencing lower-than-expected new rentals despite running a promotion. Using AI-powered search tools, we were able to narrow results by facility and focus specifically on rental-related calls. From there, it became easy to uncover the root of the issue and addressed by the team.

Zion acts as an extension of every facility. With AI-driven quality management, challenges like these move from being difficult to diagnose to straightforward, and we elevate the work away from the operator so they can focus on more important things like onsite maintenance and growing their business.

AI Agents: A New Reality

They are quickly becoming a reality, with a growing number of solutions entering the market and increasing pressure on operators to adopt a solution. Adopting AI simply because it exists is not the same as adopting responsibly.

At Zion, the approach to AI agents had been intentional and measured. Rather than viewing AI as a “turn-on and walk away” solution, the team has focused on building a strong foundation. Clearly defining the rules, workflows, facility data, and escalation paths. Without this structure, AI can create more confusion than efficiency. This is explored further in our blogs AI Isn’t Magic: Building a Foundation for Smarter Call Answering and AI Agents Alone Isn’t the Answer for Self-Storage CX

Zion is preparing to release AI agents for after-hours support by the end of Q1 2025. This rollout reflects a belief that AI should enhance the customer experience, not replace it. Our AI agents will be able to support a wide range of operational models from fully staffed facilities to hybrid and remote managed operations.

AI is going to be part of the future of self-storage, but how it’s implemented matters. We’re focused on building something that operators can trust long term, not just something that sounds impressive in a demo. Starting with after-hours support was a very intentional decision. It allows us to extend coverage and improve responsiveness while maintaining strong oversight and accountability as the technology continues to mature. – Christian Thurgood, CEO and Founder of Zion Call Management

As AI continues to evolve, Zion’s focus remains on responsible implementation. Using technology to support teams, improve coverage, and modernize operations without removing the human experience.

At the core, our philosophy is simple: technology should support people, teams, and organizations. By combining human expertise with AI innovations, Zion continues to deliver a call answering solution that meets the demands of modern self-storage operations while keeping service quality and human connection at the center.