Grow Your Real Estate Business in 2017 by Using an AI Chatbot
By now you already know what a Chatbot is, right? If this technology is new to you, Chatbot is software which can automatically respond to questions and requests using a messenger-style widget. Unlike an automated answering machine, Chatbot is powered by artificial intelligence, which means it understands the natural language conversation. It makes the automated service feel more conversational and life-like.
In 2016, big tech players like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google, launched their own Chatbots and Chatbot platforms. Since then, artificial intelligence-based applications started to boom, and many interesting bot concepts started to take shape. Like with any other new technology products, in the beginning, everyone just wants to explore how to use this “AI engine” to create a bot, but as the AI infrastructure keeps improving at such a rapid rate, it is clear that AI will surely help people in their everyday lives and make businesses run more efficiently.
Chatbot Technology Acts as Support for Agents, Not a Replacement
One of the most frequently asked questions, and possibly the scariest part of artificial intelligence that people are concerned about is “Will the AI replace human workers, and take their jobs?” The answer for the real estate industry is a clear NO. AI products are must-have tools used to support agents, but nothing can completely replace a live agent. Human touch is still very much necessary in real estate transactions; whether for buying, selling or renting, because real estate is not a standard product. It is very hard to get the full picture of how the apartment or condo looks by just looking at photos and reading descriptions. Even virtual reality is still in its early stages and is a far way from replacing actual live viewings of the properties. People tend to visit properties with someone who has complete knowledge of the property and experience about the process, before making their final decision.
Although complaints regarding real estate agents are omnipresent, and the current process occasionally has some hiccups, the solution is not to simply cut out the agents from the process. It’s very tough to be a good real estate agent, and some people take that for granted. Agents have to do everything themselves like search for the seller/buyer, post property listings online, advertise the listings, keep them updated, take requests, qualify potential customers, handle the entire sales process, and much more. In other industries, every task like that is done by a different department, but in the real estate sector agents must handle these tasks all by themselves. Agents easily become overwhelmed with all of these tasks they have to handle, and most agents won’t argue that they need help.
A chatbot is a perfect tool for real estate agents.
It handles the initial contact with potential clients, qualifies them and organizes all necessary information into sales leads. Agents can browse through leads and be well-prepared before they contact their prospective clients. Anyone with some sales background knows how important it is to sell to the right customer, so it is critically important to have high-quality sales leads. With the help of artificial intelligence, agents can save their energy for the most important part of their job: closing. That’s the core part of their business that brings in money, not spending time on taking requests or qualifying people.
Chatbots Offer More Life-like Conversational Service
Hyperlinks make websites connected with each other. We use buttons on mobile apps to make it very easy to tap and receive wanted action. AI chatbot, as its name says, is created for chat and text platforms. People expect to chat with someone online to solve their issues instantaneously, instead of calling or emailing. For chatbot to really become a widely used product, we believe it is essential to provide a full conversational experience. It has to feel like there is a real human representative behind the other screen chatting with you.
The conversational service is likely more useful in the real estate sector than in any other industries like food service or travel industry. Every renting or buying experience is unique, which is the reason agents tend to qualify and categorize potential customers by certain criteria. Traditionally, real estate agents have very easy-to-use forms for users to schedule a property viewing. The only downside with that setup is that agents don’t have any qualifying information on the person who requested the viewing. Agents need to know more about their clients than just a name and email address. If they do, they can get prepared for the viewing and have some other similar properties ready to show. As the saying goes “knowledge is king.”
Some brokerage firms and agents are already using live chat service on their websites, but this requires a dedicated customer service team to manage it, and a very few of them provide 24/7 service. Chatbot automates this process, makes real estate business more efficient, and the best part is that it’s available around the clock, every single day of the week.
Chatbot Offers Sales Assistance and Other Major Uses
Artificial intelligence is a natural fit within real estate business because it is always online, always ready to chat, and can handle a large number of inquiries. According to recent statistics, over 83% of buyers or renters start their home search online. I guess some of you had the ‘caravan’ or ‘open house’ experience where a real estate agent put you together with a group of other people when showing the property, and then they very aggressively ask qualifying questions to see if you are even qualified to rent/buy that particular property. This happens because agents don’t know which potential renters or buyers came from online sites. Are they serious in their intentions, or are they ‘lookie-loos’, just wanting to look around. This happens on every property, almost every day. So is there a way to make this process more efficient and more enjoyable for both parties?
The answer is yes! A good way to improve the process is to let both agents and their customers share some knowledge about each other before the meeting. Most agents have well-structured public profiles online and it’s easy to find their previous sales records as well. Agents usually don’t have any information about interested parties besides the name and email address, and agents always want to know if those interested parties are actually worth pursuing or not.
The initial starting point can easily be handled by the Chatbot. If agents see unqualified customers, they can simply send them an email or make a phone call before confirming any apartment or condo tours. All of the contact information belonging to the person will remain stored on the cloud, so agents can come back to those lower-quality leads whenever they have more time.
Give the Chatbot a Try — There’s Nothing to Lose!
We started our own chatbot journey in May 2016 when we created our first Chatbot on Slack, a popular team messaging platform. Since then, we refined and created different chatbots on different messengers, but our goal remained the same. The goal was to use the AI technology to boost the efficiency of traditional real estate businesses and offer agents an easy solution to obtaining qualified sales leads.
Artificial intelligence is in its early stages: it’s not yet perfect and still has a long way to go, but it’s undeniably developing and evolving very quickly. No matter what you currently think about artificial intelligence, I’d suggest you give it a try. Most agents’ biggest obstacle is simply the fear of using something they might not be familiar with. If you never used a bot, why not give it a chance and see if it can benefit your business? Siri and Alexa have already become popular assistants, now your business has a chance to embrace this emerging technology as well. Give it a try! Odds are, you will like it.
