A Place for Mom CEO Tatyana Zlotsky has been busy since she took the reins of the New York City-based company in April – all in the service of improving the company’s relationships with senior living operators.
In the last few months, APFM leadership has sought to make its online community search and referral process more friendly for senior living operators and families. Recent changes include restructuring its senior living advisor role for the first time in 10 years, and the creation of two new specialized teams meant to better connect communities and prospects.
The company’s leadership also now includes the top leader of a former senior living operator: Margaret Cabell, who previously worked as CEO of Harmony Senior Services and now serves as APFM’s chief community relations officer.
The company’s efforts can account for as much as 40% of an operator’s lead volume in any given month, and it is paid based on the success of its lead conversions. Therefore, the success of senior living operators and third-party referral partners like A Place for Mom is closely linked, Zlotsky said.
Though there are many opportunities baked into the senior living industry’s incoming demand wave, APFM’s journey ahead is still likely fraught with challenges.
Operators and their referral partners have had somewhat contentious relationships over the years, and many operators say they are still not entirely happy with the process of sourcing third-party leads from partners. Senior living referrals are also in a new era, and large companies including Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD) and Sonida Senior Living (NYSE: SNDA) are seeking to bolster their own in-house marketing strategies to reduce their reliance on third-party referral partners.
And that is not to mention the fact that companies like A Place for Mom are facing new pressure and scrutiny from the media and federal lawmakers, similar to the wider senior living industry.
Zlotsky believes the way forward for APFM lies in continuing to build trust and genuine relationships with operators, and the company’s efforts thus far have all been in the service of that.
“If we don’t change, we become irrelevant,” Zlotsky told Senior Housing News. “So, we make constant investments into our company, our services, products and people.”
Future strategy hinges on advisors, understanding operators
As Zlotsky alluded, the company’s strategy moving forward is directly linked to the success of its family advisors and their ability to get them into senior living communities.
In March, APFM laid off its customer success management team, which at the time made up about 6.8% of its nearly 900-person workforce.
The company followed up that move by launching a new program called Family Live Transfer, which is meant to connect families directly with communities to facilitate conversations and in theory boost move-ins.
Before Family Live Transfer, APFM advisors would speak to prospects, gather some information, and then pass those leads on to communities, who followed up on their own. Under Family Live Transfer, advisors now directly connect families to senior living communities instead of simply passing on their information to communities to act upon.
“The advisor reaches out, connects with the community, gives them a brief overview of the family, and then makes that connection. It’s a seamless experience for the family and for the caregiver,” Zlotsky said.
APFM created two new specialized teams to aid that process: “Welcome Advisors,” who guide families through the initial consultation process, such as care assessments, amenity and activity preferences, location, budget and tours; and “Senior Living Follow-up Advisors,” who serve as a connector between communities and prospects.
Though that change might seem like a relatively small difference, it is a crucial one as it “takes the burden off of the operators to have to reach back out,” Zlotsky said. According to APFM, the program has generated 75% more tours within the first seven days of inquiry and 60% more conversions than other referral types.
“Our strategy is to really center around our advisors,” she said. “They have the depth of knowledge and the experience in order to be able to partner with operators and move families forward in this complex senior journey. That’s key to our strategy.”
To better understand the senior living industry’s wants and needs, Zlotsky said she spoke with CEOs of operators and has visited many communities in the last seven months. The company is now in the process of forming a new advisory council for “thought leaders” in senior living to help APFM develop new products and services.
Cabell’s hiring also represents a pivot to understanding operators and their challenges in a deeper way. She joined the company in April and in the time since has already offered several ideas to make the company’s process more friendly for senior living operators, Zlotsky said. For example, Cabell suggested developing a new tool for operators wherein APFM would inform them when prospects toured their communities, with feedback on their experience.
“She represents the needs of the community operators,” Zlotsky said. “She understands how they interpret the P&L and where A Place for Mom fits in, and she is able to much more clearly articulate why it’s such a great investment and why it’s such an important strategic partnership.”
At the root of the company’s ongoing pivot is the fact that Zlotsky and APFM believe the senior living industry is now in a new era with regard to how prospects find communities. She said that more than three-quarters of leads are now coming through digital channels. In fact, 85% of APFM’s new customers opt to text rather than call advisors to set up a meeting.
To cater to customers’ hunger for doing their own research, APFM has revamped its website, which garners over 20 million unique visitors a year, Zlotsky said. The company has bulked up its number of free articles for families, such as posts on the “seven stages of dementia;” and has built a new senior living cost calculator for families.
Separate from those efforts, APFM has also built a new and growing referral site for skilled nursing, and it also has a growing home care referral network.
At the end of the day, all of these efforts are aimed at putting APFM ahead of the times when it comes to senior living.
“We have the great tsunami coming, and with so many seniors aging, the space is going to shift,” Zlotsky said. “We need to understand, anticipate and evolve.”
New era for referrals
Despite its progress, APFM and other online referral companies face a fair share of challenges ahead.
APFM in particular has faced scrutiny over its online reviews. Sen. Bob Casey earlier this year alleged the platform had “deceptive business practices” that sometimes led families to more expensive senior living options. APFM also was subject to a Washington Post investigation regarding the quality of the communities on its platform and “serious violations affecting resident care.”
There is also the fact that APFM has in the past had some contentious relationships with senior living operators, some of which have complained about the quality and number of leads coming through their pipelines. That trend has inspired more boutique referral partners to launch their own businesses in recent years, with a focus on improving relationships with operators.
Most recently, the CEOs of Brookdale Senior Living (NYSE: BKD) and Sonida Senior Living (NYSE: SNDA) have indicated they want to reduce their reliance on online referral partners and develop more of their own in-house marketing and sales practices. In particular, Brookdale CEO Cindy Baier said the company noticed “softness” among two third-party referral sources, though she did not say which two.
APFM is well-aware of the ongoing shift in senior living, the challenges ahead and the scrutiny on referral partners. As Zlotsky noted, that is why improving the company’s relationship with operators and keeping them using the platform will continue to be a big focus.
“With any customer, you have to build trust, and you do that by understanding their needs and building products and services that meet their needs,” she said. “The greatest companies in the world are built on understanding customer needs and then exceptionally meeting them.”
