MarketingTechnology
Before we get to explain a real estate chatbot, we’d like to see what a chatbot is. A chatbot or a chatterbot is an artificial intelligence (AI) software application that can simulate a conversation with a user.
A Real Estate chatbot allows you to offer your clients something more personal and engaging. It’s hard to tirelessly respond to the same questions about renting, properties, selling, etc., over and over every day, right? That’s why real estate chatbots were designed.
Why do you need Chatbots in Real Estate?
According to a 2017 survey, the first step for someone who wants to buy a house or an apartment is to search for properties online.
You and your customers need a real estate chatbot because it provides:
1. Inquiry in real-time
A real estate chatbot can help the users who land on your website and answer their questions
immediately. No need for them to wait for assistance from a human agent to give them the information they’re looking for. Isn’t that awesome?
2. Round-the-clock availability
We are humans. We can’t be available round the clock, 365 days a year. However, with a real estate chatbot, it’d seem like you are always available for your customers to help them out! It can easily outperform human agents in terms of speed and accuracy.
3. User Specific
Your customers are different, looking for different properties based on their needs and/or the amount of money they can spend. A real estate chatbot can provide what your customers want by probing them with questions and interactively offering relevant information.
4. Better Engagement
There was a time when we would give our customers endless forms to capture what kind of properties they wanted. Where would the papers go after? Exactly! Most of them would end up in the trash can. Although they slowly got replaced with online forms, they were still forms, and forms are not that easy to fill out.
With chatbots in real estate, customers can engage on a real-time basis, responding to their queries and, at the same time, collecting information about their preferences.
Your chatbot will know what your customers are looking at or looking for. It will easily predict what options your customers would like to see. Therefore, your real estate chatbot will improvise a personal experience for your customers and ensure they are hooked.
5. Better Time Management
Maybe you’ve just started your business and have plenty of time for your customers. But that will not stay the same. As your business grows, you will have more customers that will ask you many questions. Managing time will be challenging for you as it might already not be straightforward. If you want to spend your time on more critical issues, this is where a real estate chatbot can help you!
By using a chatbot, you and your sales team will deal with much narrower, filtered information, saving you time and effort. This way, you’re only concerned with closing the deal and not spending time prospecting or answering FAQs.
6. Automate the follow-up process
As we said earlier, realtors are too busy to spend time on the things that a robot can quickly do. Chatbots can be very easily utilized to follow up on your leads via the medium they choose. Your chatbot can ask the users if they want to be contacted via email or text message for more information or would directly prefer talking to the realtor.
A text message or an email will then be sent to the prospect automatically, or you can even take it in manually.
7. History of Interaction
Using a chatbot gives you access to all the information you have gathered from your users. Categorizing information this way is easier than doing it the old-fashioned way, don’t you agree? Chatbots help you by keeping records of all the conversations to date. Anytime you need to look up what the customer has said, you can just refer to the logs stored in the system.
This way, you can even identify trends between a customer and bot interactions.
8. Schedule Property Viewings
When its time arrives, the bot can schedule a home tour and take care of introducing the client and the real estate agent. The agents or sales team can take in from here.
9. 360 Degree Virtual Tours
Some people prefer seeing the property before seeing it in person. A real estate chatbot can do the job! It can give interested prospects a quick virtual tour. This gives them a fair idea of the property before even scheduling a site visit.
What are the top use cases of chatbots in real estate?
Here are the top 9 use cases of chatbots in real estate:
- Generate leads from digital users
- Build customer profiles
- Answer questions about properties
- Provide virtual property tours
- Schedule property viewings
- Follow up after property viewings
- Check for mortgage options
- Collect reviews
- Analyze market trends
Real estate chatbot examples
There are a ton of options for real estate chatbots these days. We have selected some of the bests here:
1. Freshdesk Messaging (formerly Freshchat)
According to the Freshdesk Messaging website, you can:
Deliver fast and consistent customer service across email, phone, chat, WhatsApp Business, and other social media channels from a single view.
Faster resolution at a lesser cost: Cut down on manual and repetitive tasks using advanced automation rules, and solve customer queries faster without increasing your agent strength.
Stay on top of your CSAT goals: Use customizable analytics and reports to track team performance, identify bottlenecks before they snowball, and keep tabs on your team’s CSAT goals.
2. Structurely
According to the website, Stucturley offers the following:
- Better than human: Your AI assistant delivers the same empathetic and respectful conversations as a human with more consistency and fewer headaches
- Works with any lead provider: Automatically import your leads from any online lead provider, and Aisa Holmes will engage them with a local area code phone
- Nurture unresponsive leads for the long term. Your AI Assistant does the dirty work, so you don’t have to nurture all your leads manually. Who has time for that anyway?
- Your AI Assistant empathizes with your leads and respectfully drives conversations forward. The AI understands not every lead is ready to make a decision today. She handles leads that are “just looking” and empathizes with leads that mention a new child, new job, divorce, or other life-changing events
- Manage your AI Assistant from your phone: iOS and Android apps let you take lead conversations on the go. Take over the conversation or mute the conversation from your phone
- Send lead conversations back to your CRM and copy your lead assignment rules: Lead conversations are sent back to your CRM, your lead assignment rules are copied so the right team members always get the right leads and mute/unmute conversations directly from your CRM
- Never forget a follow-up task: AI that will let you know when you’re needed so you can stay on top of your leads
3. RealtyChatbot
According to RealtyChatbot website, you will have access to the following features using RealtyChatbot:
- Automated lead response: Respond to new leads in seconds! Your automated Realty Chatbot is standing by 24/7 to chat with prospects and get leads. Even when you’re sleeping or working with other clients!
- Quick-reply buttons: Chatbot users LOVE our quick-reply buttons! Your chatbot will even record the answers to questions and email you the results. Be sure to check out our video to see them in action!
- Advanced conversation flows: RealtyChatbot advances each lead opportunity by modifying the conversation flow based on how your visitor responds. Free updates are always expanding your chatbot’s abilities.
There are other real estate chatbots that you can check out too:
- MobileMonkey
- Brivity
- ReadyChat
- Structurely
- WP-Chatbot
- Roof.ai
- Askavenue
- Chatra.io
- Flow XO
- Drift
- Olark
We hope you’ve enjoyed this article and it’s been helpful for you. Have you used any real estate chatbots before? Would you recommend any chatbot to our users? We would love to hear from you! Leave your thoughts for us in the comment below.
