Customer Experience Specialist at Cottonwood Bayview Apartments

A prospect walks in off the street, a little uncertain, maybe mid-move, definitely stressed. The way you greet them in that first thirty seconds sets the tone for everything that follows. At Cottonwood Bayview Apartments in St. Petersburg, that moment happens multiple times a day, and it's what this role is built around.

What the Work Actually Looks Like

Cottonwood Residential calls this role a Customer Experience Specialist, and the title is accurate. You're the first human contact for prospective residents, the person current residents call when something needs attention, and one of the main connectors between the property and the vendors and contractors who keep it running. That means your day moves between the leasing office, the tour path, and the amenity spaces, with phone calls, texts, and emails woven in between.

Concretely, you'll keep units show-ready, walk vacant homes and common areas daily to catch anything that's slipped below standard, and stay sharp on current pricing and availability so you can answer prospect questions without hesitation. You'll also manage the package room, support community events, and help with social media content. It's a genuinely varied role, and the variety is part of what makes it engaging, though it also means you need to stay organized and shift gears quickly.

Cottonwood has been an early adopter of self-guided tours, which is worth understanding before you join. That technology changes resident and prospect expectations: people arrive having already done a lot of their own research, and they want conversation, not a scripted walkthrough. Your job is less about reciting floor plan details and more about reading people and making real connections.

This is a full-time position with a schedule that includes evenings and weekends. That's standard in leasing, and worth being honest about upfront: the busiest traffic times are evenings and weekends, which is exactly when prospects tour and residents have questions.

Who Fits Well Here

• Comfortable standing, greeting, and genuinely engaging with people throughout the day, not just at scheduled tour times
• Quick and clear communicator across phone, email, and text, with a habit of taking detailed notes
• Detail-oriented enough to notice when a show unit is off or the tour path needs attention before a prospect does
• Organized when volume is high, especially during busy move-in periods or package-heavy days
• Open to learning new tools and technology as Cottonwood continues to build out its digital leasing experience

Cottonwood specifically mentions room to grow into management. That's real in property management: strong leasing consultants who understand both the resident relationship side and the operational basics tend to move into assistant manager and property manager roles faster than people might expect. If you want a career path and not just a job, this is a reasonable place to start building one.

Benefits include full medical, vision, dental, life, and disability coverage available within your first thirty days, a 401k and HSA with company match, three weeks of paid time off in your first year, and ten and a half paid holidays annually. There's also a quarterly bonus structure on top of base pay.