“We’re not replacing our sales teams—we’re supporting them. Further's AI SMS makes sure every lead gets the attention they deserve, even when our teams are at capacity.”
- Gary Fernandez, VP of Sales @ Sagora
As one of the top 50 senior living operators in the U.S., Sagora Senior Living runs more than 90 communities with a deeply held commitment to its Resident First philosophy. That mission isn’t just about care—it’s also about how residents and families first find, contact, and experience Sagora communities.
But in highly competitive markets, the gap between a website lead and a booked tour can close in hours—or even minutes. Sagora needed a way to maintain their high standards of responsiveness while supporting a growing number of communities, leads, and digital campaigns. So Sagora's VP of Sales, Gary Fernandez, and Corporate Director of Marketing, Chandon Sanders, turned to Further for a solution.
Using Further’s platform, including 2-way AI SMS, to engage with thousands of families, Sagora was able to achieve an average speed-to-lead of less than 2 minutes—increasing their lead-to-move-in by 124%.
In 2024 and 2025, Sagora experienced significant portfolio growth, often onboarding 10+ communities at a time. This expansion introduced new operational challenges: maintaining fast lead response times across a growing team, preventing missed follow-ups, and converting leads at scale—especially in digital-heavy markets with high lead volume.
While the Sagora sales and marketing teams were already tracking lead response diligently through their CRM and regular operational reviews, the traditional approach left little room for persistent, long-term engagement. Leads that didn’t convert quickly often faded into the background, especially those who didn’t respond to initial outreach or didn’t show up for their scheduled tours.
To fill these follow-up gaps and support their team, Sagora adopted Further’s AI-powered Messaging Assistant, a tool designed to automatically engage leads via SMS and email, answer common questions, nurture conversations, and resurface interested families when they’re ready to act.
What’s more, Messaging Assistant was able to identify unqualified leads before syncing them to the CRM, allowing sales to focus their attention on the most highly qualified leads.
“Our sales teams only have so much time to work a lead. Messaging Assistant keeps those conversations going in the background, and alerts our team when it’s time to pick them back up.”
- Gary Fernandez, VP of Sales @ Sagora
Messaging Assistant transformed Sagora’s sales results with continued outreach and conversational engagement, even when the sales team is offline or focused elsewhere.
Sagora now uses Messaging Assistant to automatically schedule tours, reschedule no-shows, and keep the conversation going long after most traditional outreach has stopped—leading to more move-ins, more successful sales, and more effective help for families in need.
Since implementing Messaging Assistant, Sagora has seen a measurable and meaningful lift in sales performance:
By combining AI outreach with human follow-up, Sagora more than doubled their lead-to-move-in rate compared to prior efforts. Messaging Assistant doesn’t replace sales—it multiplies it.
Further’s Messaging Assistant initiated or responded to 65% of all inbound leads—ensuring that most prospects got immediate, informative replies, even during nights, weekends, or staffing gaps.
Two-thirds of Sagora’s move-ins in the past year interacted with the Messaging Assistant at some point in their buyer journey. Whether it was booking a tour, asking a question, or rescheduling after a missed visit, these AI interactions made a real impact.
Even better, leads handled by Messaging Assistant converted at the same rate as those handled solely by the sales team—proving that this AI tool maintains Sagora’s high bar for quality engagement and care.
“One of the most common objections to AI messaging is that it won’t perform as well as our sales team. But with Sagora, the move-in conversion rate for Messaging Assistant leads was just as strong. That’s a huge deal.”
- Chandon Sanders, Corporate Director of Marketing @ Sagora
After seeing strong results from Messaging Assistant, Sagora has begun rolling the solution out across more of their communities. They’re also preparing to expand into:
These next steps promise to deepen Sagora’s ability to deliver timely, helpful, and humanlike experiences to families—without overloading their sales teams.
At Sagora, “Resident First” isn’t just a philosophy—it’s a promise that starts from the very first conversation. With Further’s Messaging Assistant, Sagora is turning more of those conversations into move-ins, one thoughtful message at a time.
According to Fernandez, “We’re not replacing our sales teams—we’re supporting them. Further's AI SMS makes sure every lead gets the attention they deserve, even when our teams are at capacity.”