In the latest episode of the AI First Podcast with
In this episode, Philip Irby, CTO at AMH, joins Box Chief Customer Officer Jon Herstein live from BoxWorks 2025 to share how his team built a fully cloud-native platform to manage 62,000 single-family homes. He breaks down how AI drives leasing, maintenance, and communication and why success starts with a relentless focus on the resident.
From replacing legacy systems to deploying conversational AI for real-time support, Irby explains how AMH uses Box to manage unstructured content and scale personalized service across thousands of properties.
Key moments:
(00:00) How AMH uses AI to scale resident experience
(03:15) Replacing legacy tools with Box as a single content platform
(07:30) ‘Let-yourself-in’ leasing and AI-powered customer journeys
(10:20) Meet “Amy”: The virtual agent handling 100% of inbound calls
(13:00) Automating maintenance intake with conversational AI
(17:30) Unifying structured and unstructured data with Box
(20:50) Using Box AI for contract reviews and HOA document search
(26:40) Advice on change management and AI adoption across teams
(30:00) Why discipline, not just technology, drives transformation
Highlights
Setting the Stage
AMH, a property management company overseeing over 62,000 single-family homes and building over 2,200 homes annually, presents a compelling case study of digital transformation at scale. With logistics involving 20,000 move-outs, 60,000 lease renewals, and thousands of contracts each year, Irby describes AMH as a company embarking on a bold journey to modernize legacy systems, streamline operations, and deliver superior resident experiences.
Resident Experience: The North Star
Irby emphasizes that the resident experience is central to AMH’s philosophy. For him, improvements in property management must begin by addressing resident needs:
"We need to start with the resident experience... We have to have the North Star, which is the resident. What's their experience gonna be? And are we focused on them first?"
This resident-first approach drives many of AMH’s AI initiatives, from leasing enhancements to call center innovations. AMH has launched a “see today, sign today” program aimed at allowing prospective renters to tour homes, sign leases, and move forward—all in the same day. While real-time background checks occasionally slow the process, Irby sees this initiative as foundational to delivering seamless experiences in the future:
"For the large percentage [of applicants], we should be able to get them into the house and get them signed same day."
Voice AI Innovation: Meet Amy
AMH’s AI-powered virtual agent, Amy, has transformed their call center operations, handling every incoming call and engaging in two-way conversations via voice, text, and email. Irby shares:
"Every single phone call that comes into our call center actually goes through AI first. We call her Amy, and she answers the phone, first ring, two-way conversation."
Amy is not limited to leasing inquiries; AMH is expanding her capabilities to cover resident manager calls, further enhancing customer service efficiency. According to Irby, Amy has garnered positive feedback from customers who appreciate how quickly and effectively she resolves their concerns:
"We'll get really good reviews for Amy. Some of our customers love her."
The future vision for Amy includes leveraging archived employee emails to train her on common issues and build industry-specific AI templates. Using Box makes this process simpler:
"We're gonna archive our emails into Box and then leverage Box AI over top of it... Let’s find every conversation with a resident and start to create templates so we could train Amy for those kinds of conversations."
Irby referenced mxHERO capability with email management. Learn more about mxHERO:
Unified Content Strategy with Box
Irby highlights AMH’s consolidated content strategy as the foundation for modern AI adoption. By retiring legacy platforms like SharePoint and Google Drive, AMH moved all documents into Box years ago to unify infrastructure:
"Everything we have is in Box... I started doing that five years ago and have been really militant about it with my team."
This centralized content ecosystem unlocks significant efficiencies. For instance, it forms the basis of their contract management processes, critical for maintaining operations in both property management and home building. AI-powered contract reviews help AMH save time, allowing key personnel like their Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) to focus on higher-value tasks.
Irby elaborates on the company’s efficiency gains:
"Our CISO spends hours going through contracts. These are just simple things that are great efficiencies and aren’t that hard to implement."
Moreover, AMH is developing AI agents to handle specialized contract reviews, bringing further automation to time-consuming workflows:
"Are you building specific agents on top of things like contracts to do those specific reviews? asked
Transforming Legacy Industries
Irby acknowledges the challenges of moving fast in a legacy industry while navigating resistance to change:
"Change management is a big part of this because you're changing the way people work. They're threatened by it... We’re trying to give them a capability to do more."
He advocates re-platforming as quickly as possible to avoid being mired in outdated systems while ensuring teams feel included in the transformation process:
"You gotta bring all those people with you. You can’t ignore their concerns. You have to address them and have them be part of the team."
For Irby, AI is not just the biggest technological shift of our time—it’s also the largest change management effort globally. The pace of AI innovation presents challenges in knowing when to consolidate versus scaling up:
"That’s been the challenge, right? How do you keep up? And where do you settle in, get some stuff done, and then grow with it?"
The Scale of AMH’s Challenges
AMH’s expansive portfolio adds another layer of complexity. With 10,000 Homeowners Associations (HOAs) and over 200,000 documents, manual processes are impractical. Irby underscores the necessity of AI-driven automation:
"To your point of doing things you’ve never done, we can’t summarize all of that... without automation, without AI."
Irby embraces the opportunity to reimagine systems from scratch:
"The best part about AMH for me: all the experience that I’ve had to come into a company and get to completely re-platform it, to essentially start over and build a new system for an industry that doesn’t have that type of system… it’s been exciting on every level."
Final Thoughts
For leaders exploring AI adoption in their industries, Irby’s insights underscore the importance of starting with the customer, leveraging centralized platforms for data, and navigating the complexities of change management with empathy and care. As he succinctly puts it:
"AI is about improving the resident experience—and giving people the capability to do more."
Question to Box Community
Do any of these experiences resonate with you? Are you using, or planning to us AI to manage phone call transcripts and emails to create a more contextual experience, or using agents to improve customer service? Feel free to comment in the reply!