Attache: Transforming the menial into the magical with Gemini for Google Workspace

More than 40 years ago, economist and management consultant W. Edwards Deming gave the mandate that businesses should improve their processes and systems “constantly and forever.”  That maxim remains as true today as it was then, and it’s a core part of our ethos at Attache. As a company that connects corporate professionals with monthly furnished rentals, we constantly refine our processes so we can achieve our mission to provide joy in every stay.

We know that our ability to create joyful experiences for both property owners and renters hinges on the way we work as a team. After all, the happier your employees, the happier your customers will be. That’s why we’ve been using Google Workspace since it first launched in 2006 and why we jumped on Gemini for Google Workspace as soon as it became available. We believe in letting technology do what technology does best, so we humans can do what we do best.

Simplifying customer service with Google Workspace

We switched to Google Workspace at the same time that our company started to grow, which made it easy to scale the systems as our team expanded. We continue to use the full suite of Workspace tools to power our collaboration and communication. Now, we’re excited to explore how generative AI can help us serve our customers even better.

For example, we use templates and the “Help me write” feature in Gmail to support stronger communication with renters and property owners. In customer service, there are times when we have to deliver less-than-ideal news and coming up with a productive and professional way to share it can be tricky. With Gemini, we have a collaborative tool to help us refresh the message and acknowledge challenging situations in a way that reflects our uplifting tone and personality. 

I was also recently tasked with taking meeting notes, a  task I dread and that I believe should be outsourced to technology whenever possible. I pulled the meeting agenda from the Google Calendar invite and used Gemini to create a detailed template of everything we wanted to capture, including follow-up tasks and to-do lists. After the meeting, I was able to send the notes off to department heads to get their approval before sharing with the rest of the company. Gemini reduced the time it took to complete this dreaded task to just a few minutes. 

Our use of Gemini has also helped simplify the customer experience. Onboarding a new property is notoriously complicated with bottlenecks at every turn. Every property is unique, which means a rigid, one-size-fits-all approach for onboarding is impractical and frustrating. Additionally, each department requires different processes: the accounting team needs access to the financial details, the property management service has to ensure that everything from air filter sizes to the WiFi password is accurate and functioning, while the reservations team has to corral the list of features and amenities along with high-quality photos for promotion.

It used to be challenging to keep track of where we were in the process but the “Help me organize” feature in Google Sheets has become our secret weapon, allowing us to design step-driven processes with unparalleled flexibility. Now, we have a unified place to build and organize plans, trackers, and timelines, and keep them up to date in real time. We can monitor our progress, see what sections are missing, and collaboratively get a full view of the onboarding process at a glance.

Demystifying AI usage to create joyful experiences

Let’s go back to Attache’s core mission to provide joy in every stay. This applies not only to the people who choose to rent the properties we represent, but to our teammates who choose to spend a big chunk of their time working with our organization. We are hyper-focused on creating positive employee experiences that bring joy to their lives every day, rather than bogging them down in soul-sucking data entry processes that can lead to drudgery and mistakes. We always look for ways to help our people excel at being humans by connecting and collaborating with clients and co-workers more effectively.

In 2020, we made a strategic shift from email to Google Chat as our primary internal communication tool to clear out people’s inboxes and make sure important information didn’t get buried. By giving us a place to connect, collaborate, and communicate in real time, this decision immediately helped streamline the way we work. Chat has also boosted employee engagement: everyone tunes into our Attache Fun Stuff space to share pet photos, weekend activities, gifs, emojis, and more.  With so many people working remotely, culture can sometimes suffer, but Chat has helped us foster a culture of fun and joy.

As part of our promise to support employee happiness, we outsource our data entry to limit our time spent on mundane tasks. But since we started using Gemini, we’ve been relying less and less on our third-party provider. Instead, we can offload data entry into the Google ecosystem we already know and love. And we know our data is secure. Once we drop the data entry service entirely, we will save even more. As the tool evolves, I’d love to hand off even more basic tasks, such as scheduling, time blocking, and generating task prioritizations.

It’s still early days, but so far, we get a lot of “wow” and “guess what Gemini did for me today”  feedback from our staff. Gemini supports our daily processes, improves productivity, and frees our people up to do more meaningful work. It’s truly been a joy to play around with it and see what it can do next.

I believe that AI has the power to act as a second brain and can increase job satisfaction for those who use it well, while helping us become collaborative to the nth degree.  By leaning into these tools, playing and experimenting with new capabilities, and not being afraid to fail, we can make customer service as joyous as playing with puppies in a colorful ball pit surrounded by ice cream. Or something like that.