Inside the Funnel — Katie Harman — Centralization, change management, and the human side of AI

Katie Harman, Enterprise Consultant at Funnel experienced multifamily from every angle (on site, in a contact center, in management, and as an operator implementing Funnel) before crossing over to consult with some of the industry's largest operators.

Her dual perspective shapes how Harman helps property management companies rethink their operating models around centralization and AI.

In this episode

• The story of a Funnel partner who cut missed prospect calls from 45% to 4%
• How operators think about centralization differently six years in
• Why the right specialized roles free site teams to focus on touring, closing, and renewals
• Katie's take on change management, from earning trust at every level to navigating the hardest part of any rollout: user adoption
• Why the best AI strategy is the one built around people

Follow:

• Katie Harman on LinkedIn
• Hannah O'Leary on LinkedIn

Subscribe:

• Multifamily Unpacked podcast
• Multifamily Unpacked newsletter

Episode transcript:

0:00 Inside the Funnel - Katie Harman - Centralization, change management, and the human side of AI

Hannah O'Leary: Welcome back to Multifamily Unpacked. I'm Hannah O'Leary, producer of the show. On this episode of Inside the Funnel, we're joined by Katie Harman, Enterprise Consultant. Katie has nearly a dozen years of multifamily experience. We get into how that shapes the way she helps multifamily leaders bring their operations dreams to life, plus her firsthand experience with large-scale change management.

Let's get into it.

0:35 Working with operators: I've been where you've been

Hannah O'Leary: Katie, welcome to Inside the Funnel. Thank you for joining us. Across the multifamily industry, everybody's portfolio is different, everybody's goals are different. You work with some of our biggest clients, and you work with them to shift their operating model, both with AI and centralization, to achieve their unique business goals.

Because you have that on-the-ground experience, does that allow you to understand our clients and the industry better?

Katie Harman: I think the customers that I work with really appreciate the experience.

Knowing how one company operates is very different than knowing how multiple companies operate. Coming to the table and saying, "Hey, I've seen this work. I've seen this not work. If you really want this to work, let's think about how we're going to make it work," right? Let's look at examples of other customers who have made this work, or examples of customers who couldn't make it work-and how do we make it work for you?

I have almost a dozen years of multifamily experience, so walking into the room and saying, "I've been where you have been," is a really powerful thing.

1:50 Implementing Funnel helped decrease one customer's 45% missed call rate to 4% missed call rate

Hannah O'Leary: Can you tell me about a real customer story that makes you really proud of your work here at Funnel? What wild property management company dream did you get to team up with them on making come true, and what did that look like?

Katie Harman: Yeah. Thanks for having me. I had a customer last year who identified that they were missing about 45% of their prospect calls. We walked them through what it could be and were able to successfully launch them on Funnel's contact center platform, which turned a 45% missed-call rate of prospect calls into a 4% missed-call rate for prospect calls. That means they were able to answer their customers quicker-faster, more efficient-as well as share their brand and their business with their customers.

Hannah O'Leary: That's amazing. That's such a huge decrease. I feel like that is truly what dreams are made of in the leasing journey.

3:05 Centralization today vs. 2020 how has the industry changed?

Hannah O'Leary: Before Funnel you worked at a really large, well-respected property management company, and you were there for their early centralization journey. In 2020, that's when industry leaders started their centralization journey, or formalized parts of it. And that's really the bleeding edge of where centralization became the buzzword that it is today.

Can you talk to us about how centralization has shifted, how companies think of it today, and how that compares or contrasts with your experience on the ground at a property management company?

Katie Harman: Sure. I think centralization is this buzzword even in 2026 still. It was very early on in the journey six years ago, in 2020. But looking at centralization today, the great thing is that what we're seeing is customers are identifying gaps in the customer journey where they need to plug in extra reinforcement.

It could be a person who only completes applications. They work with the applicant to process their identity verification, their pay stubs, generate the lease, send the lease, sign the lease. Maybe the onsite team wasn't able to capture that information efficiently because they have tours or they have residents walk in the door.

So what we're seeing is companies identifying a gap and plugging in somebody who is specialized to do that one job, or those two jobs, which relieves the site teams of that task so they can do more purposeful things-touring, closing the lease, moving residents in, renewing residents.

And that's the really cool part-seeing the identification of how we can plug in Funnel centralization efforts, whether it's service teams or different task routing into their business model.

Previously, people were hired in multifamily as "you have to do everything." Today, customers are able to identify, "Oh, this person's really good at this, but they may not be too good at this." So you had this previous 50% to 75% output of this employee. Now they're doing something they really like to do, so they come to work every single day really excited to work.

So centralizing doesn't just mean pushing everything into one place. It also looks at employee sentiment and output. But the biggest thing that centralization does is identify efficiency and convert that efficiency. That's what we identified in my previous experience, and what we're identifying-and what Funnel is able to do for customers who do want to centralize.

6:13 What is the biggest mistake operators make with centralization and change management?

Hannah O'Leary: As you think about centralization, what's the biggest roadblock or mistake that you see companies make with change management, after living through so much change management on the operator side and the vendor side now? I'm sure you have some strong opinions, loosely held, about how to get a large group of people to all be moving the same direction. What are your thoughts on that?

Katie Harman: I'll openly say that I think the biggest roadblock, or the biggest piece that companies forget, is that you have to get buy-in.

The executives that are making the decision and investing in the technology, investing in teams-that's great. But the operators, the people who are onsite, the site teams, the centralized teams, they're the ones who are actually going to be putting these business practices into place. I've seen it done really well, and I've seen it done not so well.

We can't forget that even the little guys are a part of the big dream. Ensuring that you get buy-in from the top down-create excitement. "This is new. This is exciting. Here's what time you're going to get back in the day. Here's what you're going to be able to do." Those types of things build up that anticipation and that momentum.

7:46 How can companies get team members on board for centralization and change management?

Hannah O'Leary: It makes sense that you need people at all levels of the business who agree with the plan. What are some really tactical ways that you've seen companies get team members of all levels? Is that "Hey, we do 1,000 onsites with people"? Is that "Hey, we make sure that we keep sending the same message over and over again"? We ground a lot of this business change into our core values. What have you seen work in day-to-day tactics that people could walk away from this and go take to their own centralization or AI, or whatever change they're trying to make efforts?

Katie Harman: I think the biggest one is just the hype.

So you send out teasers or you do a training-whether the training is in person or virtual-site visits, check-ins, also identifying teams that potentially will be a little bit more vocal, and putting together roundtables. Does this work? Does this not work? Tell me about your day.

Those types of things get the teams that are going to be executing this in the middle of it to feel like they have a say in the process, too.

You're creating hype and then continuing on-not just through rollout, but through stabilization and beyond. Something I used to put together were Funnel Tips of the Week, or Funnel Tips of the Month. Or if there's a new product or a new feature that's releasing, let's talk about it in an all-company meeting.

Everything we went into, or everything that I've seen, is always either a learning opportunity, a training opportunity, or some sort of hype-up of: this is coming, this is new, this is what we're doing. But also: how are you feeling? How do you feel about this?

Hannah O'Leary: I love that. So it's really keeping communication truly like a 360 view. "Hey, your feedback is important to make this go well. Here's us listening to you to make sure that your feedback is being implemented and we're moving all in the right direction."

And at the same time, here's the core property management team who's driving the initiative saying, "Hey, here's where we're going, and here's what's in it for you." And why at the end of the day, this should make your life and your job better, and give you time to do the things you want to do.

Katie Harman: Yeah. I think also the biggest hurdle is user adoption for the folks who are maybe stuck in the past, who may have only previously known the old system. You're going to have people who are tenured who only know the old way, and then you're going to have people who are jumping on board at your company who only know the new way.

So figuring out the dynamics of user adoption-how do you keep your tenured employees engaged while also ensuring that the new employees understand this is how we do things?

11:06 Always move forward: Best practices for building the hype

Hannah O'Leary: Are there any best practices or things that you saw worked really well getting people who might be more hesitant to adopt new practices, or anything that makes sense to talk through there?

Katie Harman: I think just ensuring that we're not moving backwards-we're moving forwards-and we're staying with the times. The company's business model has changed, and that's the way it is. I hate to be blunt about it, but sometimes it's: if you don't keep going, you fall backwards.

Hannah O'Leary: Everybody likes to talk about Blockbuster and Netflix, and nobody wants to be the Blockbuster of that story. So part of the change is that, too.

11:48 How does AI + humans work for Funnel customers?

Hannah O'Leary: One of the things I love about Funnel is that our core AI philosophy-how we build our products, how we support our clients-is that AI is there to aid and enhance teams and humans. It's not there to replace them.

So when you're working with large enterprise clients, large enterprise teams, how do you make that a reality for them? How does AI, embedded in all of the workflows throughout the CRM, influence and enhance teams day to day? What does that overarching "AI why" look like on the ground for people?

Katie Harman: The great thing about Funnel is that it's all customizable to an extent. If your business model is more human than AI, great. If you want your team members to answer the phones during the day and AI only take care of inquiries after hours, fantastic. If you want AI to present to every prospect because your team members are focused on follow-up or focused on the people who come into the office, great.

Funnel's not one-dimensional. It's definitely a tool that can be customized based off of your business model. That's the great part that I love about it. No customer does the same exact thing the same exact way. So being able to plug Funnel into your business model-whether it's more touch points for humans or more touch points for AI-we can do it.

And that, I think, is the best part: it's not a one-stop shop. We can say, "Hey, let's help develop the way that you want to run your business." That's the biggest piece of this AI plus humans.

Hannah O'Leary: And that balance can shift based on where people are in their journey-when people are inquiring, how they're inquiring. Being able to free people to operate their business how it makes sense to meet their business goals is our true end goal.

14:05 Always be curious (and find new coffee shops)

Hannah O'Leary: We're switching gears again. What are you excited about outside of work? Who are you outside of work, and how does that bleed over in terms of how you show up here at Funnel day to day?

Katie Harman: I'm just a girl. I live in Houston and love that Houston is a melting pot.

Every Saturday, my husband and I go find a brand new coffee shop that we've never been to. Or if we're having a bad week, we go to one of our tried and true favorites. I look at that and translate it into Funnel as always being curious-always being curious to what is next, or always being curious to: can I do something or recommend something to a customer that would allow them to move the needle forward?

I like to read. I like to watch movies. Typically, I'll read the book then watch the movie, or vice versa. And I think that goes hand in hand with the work that I do as a consultant with Funnel-always being nimble, curious, figuring out a puzzle. How does something fit here that may fit here? That's me in a nutshell.

Hannah O'Leary: If I think about how you work with our clients, a lot of it isn't just, "Okay, here's where we need to go." It's asking a lot of underlying questions: Why are these the goals? Help me understand them so that I can help make sure that we're configuring this and setting you and your teams up in a way that allows you to hit them-and truly being that partner in translating that journey. That's great.