iMessage for self-storage facilities

Self-storage is a subscription business where the customer has almost no reason to think about you. That is good for retention and bad for payment: the most common reason an account goes delinquent is not hardship, it is an expired card on a charge nobody was watching.

Catch the failed payment before it becomes a lien

The gap between a declined card and a lien notice is weeks of escalating cost and unpleasantness for everyone. A text at the first decline resolves most of it in a day, because the customer genuinely did not know.

export const billing = {
  // Day one. Friendly, no threat, one tap to fix.
  declined: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.facility}: your card was declined for unit ${c.unit} ` +
    `(${c.amount}). Usually just an expiry. Update here: ${c.link}`,
 
  reminder: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.facility}: unit ${c.unit} is ${c.daysLate} days past due — ` +
    `${c.amount} plus ${c.lateFee} late fee. ${c.link}`,
 
  // Plain, factual, no drama. This one has legal weight.
  preLien: (c: Ctx) =>
    `${c.facility}: unit ${c.unit} is ${c.daysLate} days past due. ` +
    `Access has been restricted, and under ${c.state} law the contents ` +
    `may be sold if the balance isn't cleared by ${c.lienDate}. ` +
    `Formal notice has been posted to you. Please call ${c.phone}.`,
};

Access and security

The other genuinely useful messages are operational: gate code changes, hours changing on a holiday, and the one nobody wants to send.

• Gate code updates — send close to the change, not weeks ahead.
• Hours and holiday closures — a customer who drives across town to a locked gate remembers it.
• Unit left unlocked. Send immediately, with a photo of the door, and say what you did about it.
• Weather warnings for facilities with drive-up units, ahead of a storm.

The move-out conversation is worth having

Most customers leave silently and you find out from an empty unit. Asking why, once, in a thread, gets an honest answer more often than a survey — and 'moving' versus 'too expensive' versus 'the unit was damp' are three completely different problems.