How is Aline "elevating aging?" Find out from their own Ashley Luchsinger on this week's episode of Bridge the Gap.
The customer advisory board has been crucial so that we're not just creating our product roadmaps for our customers. It's now with our customers.
Josh Crisp is a senior living executive with more than 15 years of experience in development, construction, and management of senior living communities across the southeast.
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Lucas McCurdy is the founder of The Bridge Group Construction based in Dallas, Texas. Widely known as “The Senior Living Fan”.
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There's a huge opportunity to make life easier for people who still have those boots on the ground.
In this episode of Bridge the Gap, Josh and Lucas sit down with Ashley Luchsinger of Aline to explore how AI and CRM innovation are reshaping senior living sales and operations. Ashley shares insights into Aline’s evolving mission of “elevating aging,” driven by new leadership, a renewed focus on customer alignment, and the launch of a customer advisory board. The conversation dives deep into the concept of zero-click discovery, where prospects increasingly gather information through AI summaries before ever visiting a community’s website. Ashley explains how this shift is changing the prospect journey, emphasizing quality over quantity of leads and the need for smarter follow-up strategies.
This week we discuss:
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Intro
Welcome to season eight of Bridge the Gap, a podcast dedicated to informing, educating, and influencing the future of housing and services for seniors. The BTG network is powered by sponsors, Aline, NIC MAP, Procare HR, Sage, Hamilton CapTel, ServiceMaster, The Bridge Group Construction, and Solinty and produced by Solinity Marketing. Bridge the Gap in three, two.
00:53 - 01:14
Lucas McCurdy
Welcome to Bridge the Gap podcast in Senior living. Podcast with Josh and Lucas. An awesome day. Day one here at the Leading Edge in Boston. Did I get that right? Did I say that right? See I come from. Texas, so we don't have that accent down there. We have a great friend and a great guest on today, one of our premier sponsors, with Aline. We have Ashley Luchsinger. Welcome to the show.
01:14 - 01:16
Ashley Luchsinger
Hi, everyone. I'm so excited to be here.
01:16 - 01:27
Lucas McCurdy
We are excited to see you, and we are excited about this day. You're going to Boston this weekend, right? You guys have been doing a little entertaining, some sports, right? It's been fun.
01:27 - 01:31
Ashley Luchsinger
We have, yeah, been to a football game already. Had some good food.
01:31 - 01:32
Josh Crisp
You're ready?
01:32 - 01:33
Ashley Luchsinger
I'm ready. I'm ready for a great week.
01:34 - 01:53
Lucas McCurdy
Okay, well, we are to, you know, we have been friends with the Aline crew. There's been so much that has transpired over the past couple of years. Y'all have dominated, and there's been a lot of changes, with acquisitions and new leadership, some new energy. We would love to know kind of what what the vibe is in the company right now?
01:53 - 02:16
Ashley Luchsinger
I think that with all the new changes, we just had some really exciting new energy. And we have a new CEO, we have a new chief customer officer. With that, we've changed our mission to elevate aging, which we're really excited to realign, position ourselves. And kind of we've seen the culture shift, to more alignment amongst all of our teams working together to the common goal of elevating each item.
02:16 - 02:21
Josh Crisp
Well, Ashley, this term that you said elevates aging. What exactly does that mean to you guys?
02:21 - 02:39
Ashley Luchsinger
Elevating aging, I think is like I mentioned, it's kind of just the restructure of the mission, right? Because we do what we do so that the end users of our software can provide better care, can provide better service to the residents and the families of the senior living communities that we support.
02:39 - 02:54
Lucas McCurdy
So with all of these changes, it looks like you guys have really done some strategic planning and strategic thinking. We know that your customer is your big focus, and you have a new advisory board. How is that impacting your relationship with your customers, Carolyn?
02:54 - 03:14
Ashley Luchsinger
So I think we've also redefined how we are moving forward with our product roadmap. So bringing in the customer advisory board has really been crucial so that we're not just creating our product roadmaps for our customers. It's really now with our customers. So we're really able to better hear what's needed to help elevate aging in the community.
03:14 - 03:24
Josh Crisp
So what's the composition of that look like when you say a customer advisory board, what does that practically look like? What do they do and how often they meet, and what's the composition of the team?
03:24 - 03:48
Ashley Luchsinger
Absolutely. So we have it's a mixture of many of our current customers and also some of our new prospects that will be that are a part of the customer advisory board. They do meet, I believe, once a quarter. And to kind of review some of the roadmaps, review some roadblocks and just kind of proactively, communicate to work together to drive the roadmaps.
03:48 - 03:59
Lucas McCurdy
AI and technology, you know, there's a gigantic future in senior housing. Let's talk about this idea of zero click discovery. Explain that to us.
03:59 - 04:26
Ashley Luchsinger
Absolutely. So this is, you know, kind of a new it's new to me as well. But when you think about anything you Google search, right. It automatically you have the AI summary of what you're looking for. You know, that's me. You I know my mom does it for pretty much everything, which means we have to believe that people who are looking for a place in the community are getting a lot of their discovery done without even hitting the web pages of any community.
04:26 - 04:41
Ashley Luchsinger
So that means that by the time that they are coming to the website, filling out that initial web query, we might be we might be seeing less of those. So how do we really capture those leads that we are getting and move them forward in the process?
04:41 - 04:55
Josh Crisp
So how is that, I mean, so we use the term prospect journey. I'm assuming that's a real big deal for you all and trying to make that easier. Less of a journey, let's say. But how is that changing the prospect journey?
04:55 - 05:23
Ashley Luchsinger
I mean, we're seeing less leads coming in the funnel. So first you want to make sure that the quality of lead that you do receive is good and that we're spending time and we're really able to, immerse ourselves in those things that are coming through. I think that it means that all the information about the communities that are on the internet, you know, needs to be positive and right there in the forefront when the AI summary is coming up, you know, we really want to see the, the, the best things about the needs of the communities.
05:24 - 05:34
Josh Crisp
Well, and I'm assuming because of all the AI developments and things like that, it's in some ways probably helping the consumer, but it means that us as providers have to be a lot more savvy, right?
05:34 - 05:49
Ashley Luchsinger
Yeah, 100%. And I think as it continues to develop too, we'll see. That comes, you know, the consumer being more comfortable using AI and some of that, some of those features as well. So we'll see a little bit less traffic and foot traffic in some of the communities initiative
05:49 - 06:04
Lucas McCurdy
And obviously that's going to be transforming how CRMs are even used from a provider from a community standpoint. And so let's talk about system of recommendation, how are you changing or at least challenging that right now?
06:04 - 07:00
Ashley Luchsinger
as soon as we get someone who does come into the CRM through whatever medium, right, it's important that we are spending time with the prospects that are most likely to convert. Obviously, all prospects deserve, you know, that, personal attention. However, it's really important not just to have a system of record, right? It's important to have the technology to work for the consumer, that our end users are excited to use the platform, that they are getting appropriate next steps for those potential residents that are more likely to move in.
So the CRM, we have some exciting relations with AI and recommend recommended next steps that really help drive the sales counselor journey to highlight individuals who may, you know, have a higher likelihood or do have a higher likelihood of converting. So really putting those at the forefront of the attention so that we can follow up with them as well.
07:00 - 08:21
Josh Crisp
And I'm assuming, I mean a lot of that. Obviously it's helping the consumer's journey. It's helping the sales teams, the community teams work more efficiently, but I'm assuming both of those together are really impacting the bottom line of the operators that you're partnering with. I'm assuming that's a big deal right now when everybody's looking to control cost, operate more efficiently, that's probably a big talking point for you all.
Absolutely. I think it's you know, obviously, as you know, at the end of the day, all of these communities are businesses and increasing as much of that margin as we can, I think, is that's one of the ways that we measure success within a line is, you know, supporting the operator journey as well. But I think really what some of the AI features and stuff in the CRM are allowing our sales counselors to be able to do is to be more proactive in their selling.
Now, because we have a system that's doing some of the following, but we have, a feature called Online Connect, which basically drives the call outs to drive some of those text messages that is, that are, typically your sales counselor would be behind the desk doing now people have more time to get out in the community, make those connections, connect with the residents who are going to come in as independent living, live in the community for longer. And that's where you're really seeing that ROI is like this part.
08:21 - 08:42
Josh Crisp
Yeah. Well, and, you know, so you all have aligned so many. Do you see what I did there aligned something that was pretty cool. I didn't even mean to do that. That was good. So so many products and services together. I mean, we could spend a lot of time talking about each one. There's so many growth things going on. And what do you find personally most excited that you're involved in?
08:42 - 09:045
Ashley Luchsinger
Yeah, absolutely. So I don't know a little personal background about me. So before I got into the technology space, I was an occupational therapist. And so I used to work in a community. I've worked in skilled nursing, and I've always felt really passionate about the delivery of care. Obviously at the end of the day, you know, that is all these departments work together, you know, to assist the president in the aging journey.
We were exciting for the longevity. So I am really more fired up and passionate as ever, just with, you know, the new mission statement elevating aging. I think that that really resonates with why I wanted to go into technology. I just saw that there's a huge opportunity to make life easier for people who are still have those boots on the ground, who are still providing the daily care to the residents or providing the service. And I think working for a technology provider that touches so many parts of the resident life, it's just really exciting to see how the technology can really enhance, that care delivery.
09:45 - 10:11
Josh Crisp
Yeah. Well, and Lucas, speaking of exciting and a lot going on in technology, our listeners may have hear the buzz behind us here at Leading Edge. It is intensifying as we're kicking this off with Ashley in line. Just a minute ago, I was actually greeted by a robot around the corner. That was kind of interesting. My first time at Leading Edge, greeted by a robot. So that was pretty interesting. Lucas, we're blessed to have partners like this to bring such great information and resources to our listeners.
10:11 - 10:35
Lucas McCurdy
It is. It really is. And technology is something that is a dominates our conversations, in senior living right now and has been, for the past year, couple of years or so. And so to round out our conversation, a final thought on, you know, sometimes it can be challenging for operators and providers to think like, how do I adopt all of this new technology? Where do I even begin? Yes, we have our CRM. We've been using that. But clearly there's a lot more options out there. What is your recommendation for, adoption of these new technologies?
10:46 - 11:22
Ashley Luchsinger
I guess I have a few recommendations, but I would say it's really important to not just have leadership, but to have buy in from the organization. So generate excitement about the new technology. And also having the resources in place, in order to implement because, you know, with any change we can, you know, there can be a little chaos.
And so how do we mitigate the chaos, get people excited about the software because if there's no excitement, there might not be use, and then you're not really able to see all that data and maybe solve for the problems that you're helping us solve.
11:22 - 11:36
Josh Crisp
So. Yeah. Absolutely. Well, Ashley, thanks for taking time. Your team is so busy here meeting with individuals. We couldn't do what we do, Lucas. Without partners like Aline helping us bring information, education that influences our industry.
11:36 - 11:41
Lucas McCurdy
It's a lot of fun. And it's going to be another great day here. Ashley, thanks for your time today.
11:41 - 11:44
Ashley Luchsinger
Of course. Thank you guys so much for having me. This was delightful.
11:44 - 11:58
Lucas McCurdy
A lot of fun. And for our listeners that want to learn more about Ashley and Aline, you can go to the show notes, hit those links down there, go to btgvoice.com, download this content and so much more. And thanks for listening to another great episode of Bridging the Gap.
Outro
Thanks for listening to Bridge the Gap podcast with Josh and Lucas. Connect with the BTG network team and use your voice to influence the industry by connecting with us at btgvoice.com.
