Zendesk AI helps Action Property Management homeowners love where they live

HOAs often get a bad rap.

Determined to raise the bar in an often-misunderstood industry, Jan Lhotka founded Action Property Management in 1984 with little more than a phone and a typewriter. She started with a single client in Southern California and built Action into the largest privately owned homeowners association management company in the western United States.

“From day one, I set out to build a company rooted in integrity, professionalism, and a genuine commitment to service,” Lhotka says. “Those values continue to guide everything we do today.”

Action Property Management now supports more than 300 communities and thousands of homes. And while the company has grown, its mission remains the same—helping people love where they live.

“We do that by offering a great customer experience,” Josh Chance, Director of Operations at Action Property Management, explains. “That means fast response times, follow-ups, and keeping residents in the loop when an issue can’t be solved in one call.”

Managing hundreds of unique communities

Action partners with homeowners associations to handle the operational work that keeps communities running smoothly. That includes coordinating maintenance, dispatching vendors, answering billing questions, and managing architectural approvals. While those tasks may sound straightforward, the reality is far more complex.

“The easiest way to imagine this is we manage several hundred different unique businesses,” Chance explains. “Every single homeowners association has its own rules, regulations, and policies.”

That complexity directly shapes how Action delivers support. To meet demand, the company built a service organization of roughly 50 agents across California, Texas, Mexico, and the Philippines. Rather than treating all requests the same, the team is organized around how issues actually unfold.

“The first group serves as the front line, handling inbound phone, email, and chat for residents and board members,” Chance says. “Many questions are resolved immediately, but maintenance-related requests often require follow-through beyond the initial interaction.”

Those cases move to a dedicated work order update team, which coordinates vendors and manages progress across multi-step, often multi-week repairs.

“This team ensures nothing stalls as work moves between contractors and phases,” Chance explains.

A third group focuses on non-urgent but highly specific needs, such as architectural reviews, amenity reservations, and compliance questions.

As Action continued to grow, keeping track of these interactions became increasingly difficult. Issues involving multiple vendors required repeated follow-ups, and separate systems for voice, email, and chat made it harder to maintain continuity.

“We needed a real ticketing system,” Chance says. “Not just to answer people faster, but to manage everything that happens after the first call.”

From fragmented tools to a single source of truth

To give the teams a complete view of every interaction, Action implemented Zendesk to corral its channels into a single platform. It also enabled AI to support the entire service journey—from first contact through resolution.

“AI has impacted every possible layer of our business,” says Chance. “We’re in this all the way through.”

The results were immediate. Within months of going live, Action reduced its average first response time by 81 percent—from 390 minutes to 74 minutes—across all channels, while continuing to handle more than 22,000 monthly tickets.

“That kind of improvement doesn’t come from one feature,” Chance says. “It comes from everything working together.”

AI agents that understand every community

One of Action’s biggest challenges is that a simple homeowner question can have dozens of different answers, depending on the association.

“Our customer service teams have a very difficult job,” says Chance. “For example, an agent in Texas is not going to call the same vendor for a plumbing leak as an agent in California.”

Rather than relying on generalized self-service content, Action built AI-powered self-service with precision. The company created distinct knowledge bases for each homeowners association, reflecting the reality of how its business operates. When a resident asks a question, AI pulls information that applies specifically to that community.

“We have tens of thousands of articles across hundreds of brands,” Chance says.

The result is self-service that feels personal, not generic. In many cases, homeowners can resolve questions on their own—without waiting for a callback or escalating to an agent.

AI agents are currently up-and-running for roughly 30 percent of Action’s associations. And even at this early stage in its Zendesk AI journey, the company is seeing a nearly 80 percent AI automation rate for chat inquiries–resolutions requiring no agent involvement.

“That’s a huge number,” Chance says. “And we’ve achieved that very quickly.”

Smarter agents, faster resolutions

When a conversation does require an agent, Zendesk AI continues to add value behind the scenes. AI-powered agent assist listens to live calls and surfaces relevant, association-specific knowledge in real time.

“Our agents don’t spend time hunting for information anymore,” Chance says. “It’s right there while they’re talking.”

Zendesk’s Copilot drafts email responses using association-specific knowledge, allowing agents to review and send replies in seconds. AI-generated ticket summaries condense long threads into clear overviews—especially valuable for community managers overseeing dozens of associations.

One top support agent was so impressed, she pushed to expand Copilot’s rollout.

“She asked me, ‘When are we turning this on for everyone?’” Chance says. “She realized that with AI, she could move faster, stay accurate—and still give great service.”

AI intent that prioritizes what matters

Not all requests carry the same urgency. A roof leak demands immediate attention, while untrimmed hedges can wait. Zendesk AI intent automatically analyzes incoming requests, flags emergencies, and routes them to the right team.

“That triage is critical for us,” Chance says. “It’s probably 85 to 90 percent accurate—and that’s enough to make a real difference.”

As a result, Action now consistently responds to high-priority issues within four hours, while maintaining a one-business-day response target for standard requests.

Turning insight into impact

Zendesk reporting gives Action’s leadership team visibility they never had before. Beyond basic metrics, the team can analyze why customers are reaching out, how long specific issue types take to resolve, and where processes can improve.

“We can see the median time it takes to handle a water leak versus a billing question,” Chance says. “That’s the kind of data executives need to run a smarter operation.”

Customer satisfaction reflects those improvements.

“We’ve seen a 20-point increase in CSAT,” says Chance. “A lot of that can be attributed to Zendesk—the ability to respond faster and let residents interact with us in the way that works best for them.”

Another key to helping raise CSAT is Zendesk’s AI-powered QA tool, which automatically evaluates support interactions so teams can review conversations faster, more consistently, and at scale.

“The AI is asking all the right questions—things like did agents answer the call correctly or did they use the appropriate tone,” Chance says. “Now, with Zendesk QA, the speed of doing a score is up to 20 percent faster than our previous system.”

By combining Zendesk AI agents, Copilot, QA, intent, and analytics, Action Property Management is transforming how homeowners experience support—and in the process, they’re getting closer to their mission of helping people truly love where they live.

“With Zendesk AI, we’re reimagining the HOA through multiple forms of communication,” says Chance. “Instead of being bogged-down with routine requests, our managers now have time to focus on taking care of our residents.”