How Bots Are Driving Growth Across Industries Including Real Estate
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How Bots Are Driving Growth Across Industries Including Real Estate

Michel Moubarak
Michel Moubarak

I hear you, you may still be skeptical about this new technology.

It is normal. It’s how things have always been.

In fact, Geoffrey Moore talks about this phenomenon in his book “Crossing The Chasm”. He talks about the technology adoption lifecycle and how 5 segments are involved:

  1. Innovators
  2. Early adopters
  3. Early majority
  4. Late majority
  5. Laggards

Crossing the chasm

I think we are crossing the chasm. Why?

Because two of the top CRM platforms, just introduced BOTS.

Intercom, the previously live chat only company.

And most recently the giant CRM, Hubspot.

The aim?

To have personalized conversations at scale.

What are Bots?

Some bots are more complex than others. Some automate form filling others have some intelligence to them.

The most advanced bots are powered by artificial intelligence.

AI helps bots understand complex requests, personalize responses and improve interactions over time.

Chat widget

Why bots?

It's all part of a larger shift we're seeing in consumer behavior.

During the home-buying/selling process, people want the information they need right when they are on your website.

If you're able to provide that information right where they are and when they need it, that’s value. That’s a good customer experience.

All that any consumer wants is the most direct line between their problem and a solution.

New Way

New way

We can now say that bots are helping our customers grow their real estate businesses in much faster and more efficient ways.

Our real estate bot runs on your website to help guide your website visitors to the right outcome without any manual human intervention.

Say a buyer lead lands on your website. The bot will engage them in many different ways. Here's a few examples:

Match them with Listings

Match buyers with listings

Schedule Showings

Schedule showings

Personalize the Experience

Personalized bubble

All that done right there and then inside the Roof AI messenger.

For a seller lead, the bot can guide them to a home valuation page where they can see real-time data about their home’s worth.

The bot can also engage with a potential recruits that want to become part your real estate brokerage!

Career opportunities

Consumers are defining the next generation of business communication. Here are three reasons why real estate businesses need to pay attention:

1- Messaging is the primary way customers want to connect with businesses

Messaging has taken over our personal communication so fast. It’s now taking over the business world as well.

Customers expect modern businesses to have a chat option on their website, it makes communication fast and easy.

This brings with it a host of new opportunities compared to static old tools like email and forms.

I have myself closed and communicated with many clients via our web messenger. Many, prefer communicating via chat than by email or phone.

Messaging statistics

2- Integrations will give consumers endless opportunities

This technology is evolving fast, bots are getting smarter and integrations with other tools and apps is becoming easier.

Integrations with third party data providers will give visitors access to important information, without having to leave your website.

Schools Nearby

Schools nearby

Neighbourhood Data

Neighbourhood data

Your website visitors will also be able to perform more actions through this window. Using different app integrations your website leads can have access to complimentary services such as mortgage and title & insurance...

Consumers are becoming more comfortable with taking actions (buying) online. We see it with the growing popularity of iBuyers. So it is important, now more than ever, to empower your customers with information that helps them make decisions faster.

Visitors now can stay on your site, get things done right there and move faster towards that closed transaction.

These integrated experiences result in much higher completion rates. More conversations, better quality leads, more deals closed.

3- Chatbots have come of age and are helping businesses grow faster

Yes, at the beginning of the chatbot hype, the technology was very basic and primitive.

Things have changed considerably.

In the hype cycle below you can see the five key phases that new technology passes through.

Innovation trigger -> Peak of Inflated Expectations -> Trough of Disillusionment -> Slope of Enlightenment -> Plateau of Productivity.

Gartner's Hype Cycle

Hype cycle

Good news is that chatbots are over the hype. We have now learned how to use bots efficiently and design them in a way that can help real estate brokerages grow and scale.

How chatbots deliver value

A- Bots can automate repetitive work. Chatbots can easily handle the repetitive and time consuming work your e-team does. Such as manually qualifying people or scheduling meetings. This gives your team time to talk to people and close deals with those high quality leads. Your team focuses on what people can do best and your business sees huge efficiency gains.

B- Chatbots operate 24/7. They collect qualified leads and book meetings while your sales reps are asleep. It’s only during off hours that online real estate activity peaks. Rather than making leads wait till the morning to get a reply (and a lot of the time not even get a reply ever), your real estate bot will service those inquiries and prepare a set of qualified leads for your team to start their day with.

C- Chatbots can scale. No more “waiting for representative” and no more queuing, chatbots can handle thousands of inquiries at once. You do not have to worry about this live chat limitation on your site, dealing with volume while maintaining quality is now possible. With chatbots you can have infinite number website visitors interacting with the messenger and getting qualified without having to worry about scaling up your sales team.

Everyday, thousands of leads land on your real estate brokerage’s website only to be welcomed with outdated and static tools that make communication nearly impossible. Those tools are so outdated that they are responsible very painful lead response times. Only 7% of real estate brokerage respond to their leads within an optimal timeframe. 40% of those brokerages do not even reply to their leads.

Real estate brokerages today are ignoring website visitors. Not because they want to, but because the tools they use do not enable them to reply in time. In the best case there might be live chat, which many of our clients have confessed to turning it off because they were worried about not being able to reply.

Why do leads go to listings aggregators such Zillow vs a brokerage’s website? It’s because Zillow provides a better customer experience. Consumers will go where it is easy and fast to get answers.

With messaging and bots, real estate brokerages can get back into the lead generation game. They will be able to drive huge business growth through new customer acquisitions, without having to scale up their e-team or change the way they do business.

A new era of business communication and customer experience is upon us and real estate brokerages need to embrace that change. Join the top real estate brokerages using Roof AI.

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