7 Emerging Reasons You Should Invest In Real Estate Chatbots

You’ve probably already interacted with a chatbot template in the wild. Whenever someone interacts with customer service today, they’re usually using an intelligent chat program – at least at first. Every large real estate company now has real estate chatbots on its website.

Real estate chatbots makes it possible for people to connect with and get information from a real estate professional even when they aren’t online. There are numerous reasons why you should have a chatbot on your website, social media, and landing pages — let’s take a look at some of the most important ones.

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1. Real Estate Chatbots Provide Valuable Leads You Wouldn’t Otherwise Get

Let’s say someone visits your website and finds it interesting. But it’s 6:00 PM and you’re out of the office; they can’t give you a call. Maybe they just move on and forget about it — until they run into a real estate agent later and decide to work with them.

The answer is real estate chatbots.

While real estate isn’t exactly a “spur of the moment decision,” working with a specific Realtor can be. A real estate chatbot can fill in the gaps when you’re not there.

Real estate chatbots operate 24/7. A real estate chatbot is inserted into your website (or your Facebook page, such as a Facebook auto-responder), so people feel as though they can always live chat with you.

Rather than simply leaving your site, they would instead open up a live chat and give you basic information about their needs. You would then be able to follow up with them later. A live chat greatly improves your lead generation; it’s like being personally available all the time.

2. Real Estate Chatbot Can Score Leads for You

A modern real estate agent may need to comb through thousands of online leads every month. Gone are the days when you’d get 12 in-person referrals and 2 jobs — now you get 1,200 online referrals to sift through for those 2 jobs. But a real estate chatbot can help scoring leads.

When you program your AI chatbot, you can have it ask questions such as: When is the person looking to make a purchase? Have they already gone through the process of prequalification? Do they have any properties in mind? Your real estate or WhatsApp chatbot will serve the purpose of pre-scoring leads for you, so you know who is most serious.

Not only does it save you time, but it means you can deliver better customer service — which is what matters most in the modern real estate industry. Once you start connecting with your customers, you’ll be able to forward them exactly the listings they need.

3. Chatbots Can Integrate with a CRM Solution

Today’s agents need a customer relationship management (CRM) suite. CRM suites keep track of everyone you’ve spoken with and the interactions you’ve had with them. Your AI chatbot can be integrated with your CRM solution — and that’s critical.

In online sales, including the real estate business, touchpoints are important. The more interactions you have with a potential client, the more likely they are to work with you.

Once website visitors have interacted with your real estate bot, they will likely have left their email address, name, and some other basic information. From there, you can email them a welcome message, encourage them to interact with your social media, and otherwise continue to foster a relationship.

4. An AI Chatbot Can Connect Customers With a Live Agent

Once an AI chatbot has determined that a customer is ready to commit to a transaction, the chatbot can actually send the messages to the Realtor. As long as the Realtor is available (a real estate broker can set their own hours), the chatbot can forward prospective customers.

There can even be another layer of connectivity: a live human agent. If a real estate professional is very busy, then an intelligent chatbot can first send customer queries to a human agent who is trained to ask the right questions. Once that human agent has given basic, qualifying questions and provided a positive customer experience, they can then send the live chat on to a real estate agent.

When a real estate chatbot connects with a live agent, it’s called “escalation.” Escalation can even be programmed based on the customer’s needs. For instance, the real estate chatbot can forward the client to a different agent based on where the client is.

5. Real Estate Chatbots Can Perform Scheduling Functions for You

Real estate chatbots can be integrated into other functions of your website (or social media, like Facebook). Consequently, they can also do things like schedule appointments for you. Your chatbot can be linked directly to your calendar to avoid overbooking, and you can set the times that you prefer to be scheduled.

Being able to schedule an appointment right away online makes it much easier to secure leads. A lead that might be “so so” on meeting can create a confirmed appointment — making it easier to follow up with them. And you won’t need to track your own appointments as closely, so the real estate chatbot will serve as a sort of virtual assistant.

Time management is critical for a real estate business, especially those that perform lead generation online. The more services that can be automated, the less administrative time the real estate business will waste — and the more revenue generation that can be performed.

6. Collect and Analyze Key Information About Your Market

Consider the following: You have a website in your local market. Last quarter, you received 1,000 inquiries through your website and Facebook. This quarter, you’ve received 2,500.

It’s possible that your advertising campaigns are working much better. But it’s also possible your local market is booming.

Your live chat will provide more information regarding the individuals looking to buy and sell in your local market. With the qualifying information at hand, you’ll be able to see where buyers and sellers are, what they’re looking for, and when they’re looking to commit.

This type of analysis can put you ahead of the pack in terms of identifying the market temperature and market needs. As you fine-tune your chat, you can add further metrics — such as asking potential clients what their budget is or how much they make. This will help you target major demographics.

As people usually start looking to buy and sell much earlier than they actually commit, your chat can also indicate what is coming up in the market. When you see a slow down in the market now, you can anticipate that it’s going to be a slow down in revenue in the future.

7. Make Your Younger, Tech-Savvy Customers More Comfortable

The truth is that most younger customers hate using the phone. They hate emailing. They are comfortable with live chat.

Over time, the real estate market is going to get younger. The people who are buying and selling properties will get younger. Millennials are now at the age where they are buying their first property or selling their second.

A lot of customers don’t want to have a conversation on the phone. Instant messenger is a low-pressure method of communicating and connecting. It’s an always-on system that they can use at their leisure. They can fire off a message when convenient to them and they’re not obligated to respond until they want to.

Realtors today are going to find that people are increasingly communicating through messaging platforms. A real estate agency that isn’t able to change its methods of communication is going to fall behind more tech-savvy areas of the real estate sector.

FAQs on Real Estate Chatbots

Do you need to know how to program to use a chatbot?

You can download a real estate chatbot template. There are both free chat app platforms and paid platforms; the paid platforms generally come with additional features. Either way, you don’t need to program to build a messenger bot.

Most will come with a chatbot builder or a way of “scripting” the chatbot without having to program. Many even have an artificial intelligence or machine learning package that can “learn” what people want over time.

Even WordPress has a number of bot builder plug-ins that can be incorporated into a landing page or blog.

Can you use a chatbot on a social media platform?

A lot of real estate agents are getting more leads through Facebook than through their websites. You can use a messenger chatbot to pre-score leads on Facebook. On Facebook, there’s even a built-in solution. When people query you through your business page, it can respond.

You can download a Facebook messenger chatbot and start customizing it for your business. This will increase your “always responds within” metric, too.

There are limits to what you can do with Facebook and still not violate their Terms of Service — you should use the official Facebook bots provided by Facebook itself if you don’t want to run afoul of the Terms of Service.

Does using real estate chatbots seem like talking to a human?

Modern chatbots are so robust that the chat can seem extremely human-like. For the purposes of lead generation, most chatbots reveal that they are an AI solution upfront in the conversation. This can make it less likely that a human will feel “tricked” or “confused.”

The purpose of the chat isn’t to trick people into thinking they’re talking to a person, but to ensure that the conversation is natural — that people are able to ask questions of the bot without them being misunderstood.

How much information can a real estate chatbot get from a buyer or seller?

A chatbot can get a lot of qualifying information. For a buyer, it can collect whether the buyer has a property in mind, whether they are prequalified or approved, and what range and area they’re looking in. For a seller, the real estate marketing bot can get the property address, their ideal selling point, and when they want to sell.

You can customize your chatbot platform to get as much information or as little information as you want from a visitor. You can then analyze that data so you can connect with the best potential leads first.

Are there potential downsides to using real estate chatbots?

If a chatbot isn’t properly programmed, it can be more frustrating than convenient to a visitor. You can protect against this by always giving a visitor the option to send an email directly. You should test your chatbot’s functionality with multiple people, including those who aren’t familiar with the technology.

Final Thoughts on Real Estate Chatbots

Real estate chatbots are a great tool that you can utilize for a successful real estate business. They create a more convenient experience for your leads, and they’ll also save you time and money.

Do you currently use a real estate chatbot? Do you plan to try one out? Let me know in the comments below!