Who to Call, When, and What to Offer: How AI Is Changing Collections
For as long as anyone has run collections in self-storage, it has worked the same way: one process for everyone.
A tenant misses a payment and enters the sequence.
The same letters, the same calls, on the same schedule, whether it is a reliable customer who simply forgot or an account that has been gone for ninety days. It is consistent, it’s fair, and it treats everyone alike.
AI is about to make that ‘sameness' look inefficient and expensive.
The next edge in collections is not working harder. It is knowing who to call, when, and what to offer, before you ever pick up the phone.
COLLECTIONS HAS ALWAYS BEEN ONE SIZE FITS ALL
Think about how a delinquent account moves through your process today. Day five, a text. Day ten, a letter. Day fifteen, a call. Every account rides the same rails at the same pace.
The trouble is that no two delinquent tenants are actually the same.
One needs a single reminder and will pay in full. One needs a payment plan to get back on track. One left weeks ago and will never respond, so every notice you send is time and postage spent on a lost cause.
A uniform sequence overworks the accounts that would have paid anyway and underserves the ones an earlier, smarter touch could have saved.
It is easy to run and expensive to rely on. Until recently there was no practical alternative, because sorting thousands of accounts by hand, account by account, was never realistic.
WHAT SMART COLLECTIONS ACTUALLY MEANS
That is the part that is changing. And is exciting!
Instead of pushing every account through the same pipe, AI can look at each one and answer three questions the old process never really could:
Who to contact first. Not every account is equally recoverable. A model can rank accounts by how likely they are to pay and how much is at risk, so your team's effort goes where it recovers the most money.
When to reach them. Timing decides whether a message gets ignored or gets a payment. There are moments an account is far more able to respond, and reaching them then beats reaching them often.
What to offer. A reminder, a payment plan, a settlement, or nothing at all. The right move depends on the account in front of you, not on what day of the sequence it happens to be.
Don’t forget: Making it easy to pay is also an important factor.
None of this replaces a manager's judgment.
It aims that judgment at the right accounts with the right move, instead of spreading it evenly across all of them. That is the whole shift: from running a sequence to acting on a recommendation.
WHY THIS IS THE SHIFT THAT WILL SEPARATE OPERATORS
Self-storage has spent the last several years automating the front of the business: online move-ins, dynamic pricing, smart-access entry.
Collections, the back of the business, has stayed manual and uniform.
It is next, and the gap between operators who make the move and those who do not will show up directly in NOI.
The operator running a blanket sequence spends the same effort on every account and recovers what the calendar allows.
The operator acting on intelligent recommendations recovers more while doing less, because the effort is aimed. This is not a distant, someday capability. It exists now.
The real question is no longer whether AI can decide who to call, when, and what to offer. It is how quickly that becomes the standard, and who is ready when it does.
The operators who pull ahead over the next few years will not be the ones who chase hardest. They will be the ones who stop guessing about who, when, and what.
This series will dig into each of those questions over the coming weeks: which delinquent tenants are actually worth keeping, and how timing quietly decides how much you recover. That future is closer than most of the industry thinks.
Sources
Storable 2025 Self-Storage Outlook Guide, Storable, 2025.
Still running one collections sequence for every delinquent tenant?
A workflow audit shows where a one-size-fits-all collections process is leaving recoverable revenue on the table.
Frequently Asked Questions
1: How is AI changing debt collections in self-storage?
A: For decades, collections has run as one uniform sequence: every delinquent account gets the same letters and calls on the same schedule. AI changes that by treating accounts individually, deciding who to contact first, when to reach them, and what to offer each one. The shift is from pushing every account through the same pipe to acting on an account-by-account recommendation. It aims effort where it recovers the most, instead of spreading it evenly.
Q: What does AI-driven or intelligent collections actually mean?
A: It means using a model to rank delinquent accounts by how likely they are to pay and how much is at risk, to time outreach for when a tenant is most able to respond, and to match each account with the right offer, whether that is a reminder, a payment plan, a settlement, or nothing at all. It does not replace a manager's judgment. It points that judgment at the accounts and actions most likely to recover revenue.
Q: Why does a one-size-fits-all collections sequence fall short?
A: Because no two delinquent tenants are the same. A uniform sequence overworks the accounts that would have paid on their own and underserves the ones an earlier, tailored approach could have saved. It also wastes effort on accounts that are already gone. The process is easy to run, but it leaves recoverable revenue on the table because it cannot tell those accounts apart.
Q: Can AI decide who to contact and what to offer a delinquent tenant?
A: Yes. A model can rank accounts by likelihood to pay and balance at risk, identify when an account is most able to respond, and recommend an appropriate action for each one. The manager still makes the call to the tenant, but the recommendation aims that effort where it recovers the most money, instead of spreading it evenly across every account. That is the practical meaning of smart collections.
Q: What should self-storage operators do to modernize collections?
A: Move away from one blanket sequence toward prioritized, well-timed, account-specific outreach. That means ranking accounts by recoverability, reaching tenants when they are most able to pay, and matching the offer to the situation. The operators who make this shift recover more with less effort, and the capability to do it is available now rather than years away.
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