Customer Experience Specialist (Leasing/Customer Service)

What You'll Actually Do

Stratford at Hillcrest Apartments in Winston-Salem is looking for a Customer Experience Specialist who keeps the front-facing side of the community running with warmth and consistency. This is a full-time leasing and resident relations role, and the day-to-day is genuinely varied. You're greeting walk-ins, fielding calls and texts from prospects, showing available homes, and making sure the tour path looks sharp before anyone steps through the door. You're also the person who notices when a common area needs attention, when a package room is getting chaotic, or when a move-in is a few days out and the apartment still needs a final check.

Community events and social media marketing are part of the mix too. Cottonwood Residential has built a reputation around self-guided tours, so you'll be part of a team that takes the resident experience seriously from first inquiry through move-in and beyond. Weekend and evening availability is required, which is standard for leasing roles and worth knowing upfront.

The role touches residents, prospects, vendors, and the broader team daily. Someone who can shift from a warm welcome at the front desk to a detailed vendor follow-up call to a quick social media post, all in the same morning, will feel at home here. The communication load is real: phone, email, text, and in-person, often running in parallel.

What You Bring

• Genuine comfort talking to people you've never met, including prospective residents who are stressed about finding a place to live
• Clear, prompt communication across channels (phone, email, text)
• Attention to detail when walking units and common areas before showings or move-ins
• Comfort with a flexible schedule, including weekends
• Creativity and initiative, especially around resident events and community marketing
• Organized enough to manage a package room, vendor notes, and leasing details without things slipping through

Where This Role Can Take You

Cottonwood Residential is transparent about growth: this position is a real entry point into property management leadership. Customer Experience Specialists who learn pricing, occupancy dynamics, and resident communication well tend to move into assistant manager or leasing manager roles. You'll build skills in traffic management, leasing conversion, and resident retention that carry across any multifamily portfolio, whether you stay within Cottonwood or eventually move into a broader PM career.

One thing worth knowing: the candidates who stand out in this kind of role aren't necessarily the ones with the most leasing experience. They're the ones who follow through consistently, communicate proactively when something's off, and treat a prospective resident's apartment search with the same care they'd want for themselves. That combination of professionalism and genuine attentiveness is what separates solid from exceptional in a customer-facing leasing role.