As a real estate agency, property management company, or a consultancy, consider all the marketing tools you implement to capture and nurture high quality leads on your website – running Google and social media ads, using site banners, sending newsletters, writing impeccable content pieces, and so on and so forth.
While these methods increase website footfall, the leads often don’t convert into clients. Why so? Primarily because when the user lands on the website, they either find it difficult to engage with someone or are unable to get their queries answered immediately. Interested leads may not always want to buy or rent out a property immediately. They may want to get details on forthcoming projects, schedule site visits, address documentation issues or other related queries.
With their ability to automate routine tasks, setting follow-up processes, scheduling property visits, and providing personalized experience, incorporating real estate chatbots seem to be an ideal solution for any and every real estate company.
So through this blog, let’s understand what benefits real estate chatbots bring for you and why you should consider incorporating it in your marketing strategy.
What are Real Estate Chatbots?
As the name suggests, chatbots are artificial-intelligence backed softwares that aid in automating conversations with users. These conversations are facilitated in a natural language via websites, mobile applications, and other related mediums. In opposition to the “one individual for each query” approach followed in the traditional client support unit, chatbots can identify and address various clients’ needs in one go.
Real estate chatbots allow you to automate FAQs, respond to queries instantly, qualify buyer and seller needs, offer 360-degree virtual property tours, and address user-specific queries. Therefore, the development of AI and natural language handling abilities has made chatbots more human than any other inventions, thereby providing enhanced customer experience through round-the-clock services.
How do Real Estate Chatbots Work?
To understand how real estate chatbots function, it is essential to familiarize yourself with the different types of bots available.
| Scripted Bots | As the name suggests, scripted bots are rule-based bots that are capable of answering simple or pre-fitted queries. They can either be used as online assistants for answering the FAQs or for collecting leads’ information. |
| AI-Based Bots | If you want to provide users with very specific and detail-oriented information from your real estate catalog, then AI-based chatbots are the solution. These bots are programmed with more sophisticated technologies, such as AI & Natural Language Processing (NLP) to address complicated business issues. This includes offering personalized property recommendations or scheduling an appointment. Information, therefore, is based on user inputs and not pre-scripted answers. The budget of such bots is slightly on a higher side as they are tailor-made, based on your business requirements. |
Not restricted to only websites, real estate chatbots can be deployed across different platforms such as WhatsApp, SMS, Facebook Messenger, and Skype.
What are the Benefits of Using Real Estate Chatbots?
Chatbots have become mainstream in the recent past, especially since tech giants like Facebook and Google launched their own chatbot platforms. The conventional “pen and paper based” real estate sector, which is considered as one of the slowest in terms of adopting new technologies, is now reaping tremendous benefits of this artificial intelligence-enabled technology. Let’s understand how.
1. 24×7, 365 Days Technical Support
With multiple tasks scheduled in a day, it can become overwhelming for any real estate professional to address multiple user queries. This is where real estate chatbots can help tremendously. By operating round-the-clock and without any human agent’s help, these chatbots can promptly initiate a conversation with the user, assess, and address their queries.
More importantly, chatbots log and feed the conversation into CRM. Therefore, when a client visits the website again or has another query, the agent can service the customer better by going through the consolidated chats.
2. Identifying Quality Leads
By interacting with each lead, collating, and maintaining the data, real estate chatbots provide a narrower and filtered lead base. These bots automate your sales funnel by asking specific questions. Based on the responses, chatbots create meaningful audience segments by separating leads based on factors such as demographics and interests, thereby predicting a lead’s position in the buying journey. Since chatbots can engage and understand the target audience better, it can provide accurate information and increase conversion rates.
3. Personalized Recommendations
Every client has their own set of requirements when it comes to selling or investing in different types of real estate assets. Real estate chatbots provide prospective customers with a series of pre-structured questions to come up with more relevant project details, offers, and other information. By gauging the answers, chatbots can offer an accurate, detailed, and personalized recommendation, which stands more effective than collecting and evaluating information via physical copies of forms.
4. Scheduling Site or Virtual Property Visits
As discussed, real estate chatbots are powered by artificial technology and can therefore segregate hot from cold leads. So when a client is deep into the sales funnel, the chatbots can not only introduce the agent to the client but can also offer to schedule a site visit. In fact, some bots are programmed in such a way that they can also offer virtual property tours through the chatbots themselves.
5. Maintaining Records Of Conversations
Even if an agent successfully conquers the task of conversing with a lead, it is a little too much to also expect them to take notes from the conversation or remember every little detail communicated to them. The process of note-taking is also not feasible given the number of different clients that have to be dealt with, on a daily basis.
It is, therefore, helpful to use a chatbot that automatically registers the conversation and requirements of the people who visit the website. Based on the interaction that has taken place, follow-ups can also be initiated automatically via mail or other social media, as programmed.
6. Breaking The Barrier of Language
It is possible to program the chatbot in such a manner that it possesses the ability to process and communicate information in more than one language. This means that they can interact with any user across the country and even nationalities, in a language that they are most comfortable with. On the one hand, where a multiplicity of languages is hard to achieve in the case of humans, it is pretty easy to incorporate as far as bots are concerned. This feature enhances the importance of bots in the sector of real estate, while also ensuring greater customer satisfaction.
7. Enhanced Customer Experience
Real estate chatbots offer businesses a platform to improve clients’ experience and a company’s operational productivity by decreasing the run-of-the-mill cost of client support. This is possible since bots provide real-time and 365 days engagement, can identify quality leads by assessing user requirements, can schedule appointments, thereby offering personalized recommendations at every step.
Challenges Associated With Using Real Estate Chatbots
It is a well-acknowledged fact that the real estate business thrives on mutual connections and word-of-the-mouth. This, in turn, is based on the kind of bond or connection that a real estate agents is able to establish with their clients. Not only do conversations with chatbots appear robotic and unnatural, but they also lack the humanly element required to establish a valuable emotional conversation.
Most chatbots are only able to reply with words, sentences or algorithms that are pre-programmed in them based on the keywords in a question. The algorithms and knowledge need to be constantly updated if one wants the chatbot to even be relevant. If the bot encounters a question they do not have an answer to, a client might simply be displeased. Therefore, it requires constant maintenance and updates so as to keep up with multiple project details and the ever-evolving industry requirements.
Future of chatbot in real estate
In the near future, the real estate industry will be transformed by AI chatbots. These intelligent bots will be an integral part of real estate websites, mobile apps, and even your daily life. With the latest advancements in technology like generative AI and natural human speech AI, real estate AI chatbots will become more human-like, conversational, and persuasive.
Generative AI is a game-changer in the world of chatbots. This technology enables machines to create new content based on patterns they’ve learned from data. Real estate AI chatbots with generative AI capabilities will be able to understand and respond to queries in a more personalized and conversational way. They’ll be able to provide real-time property information, answer questions about the buying or renting process, and even give personalized recommendations based on user preferences. Natural human speech AI is another technological advancement that will make interacting with real estate AI chatbots even more accessible and user-friendly.
This technology allows chatbots to understand and respond to spoken language, making it easier for users to interact with them, especially in industries like real estate where people prefer to talk things out instead of typing. Real estate AI chatbots will be incredibly helpful in the buying or renting process. They’ll provide users with accurate and up-to-date property information, answer questions about the process, and even help users find properties that fit their preferences and budget. Who knows, they might even become your new BFF, helping you out with everyday real estate tasks and providing entertainment and education.
The future of chatbots in real estate is bright and full of potential. As these tools become more sophisticated and integrated into the industry, they will offer real estate professionals new ways to engage with customers, streamline processes, and enhance the overall customer experience. However, it will also require a careful balance between leveraging the benefits of chatbots and maintaining the personal touch that is so crucial in the real estate industry.
Conclusion
Recent technologies endeavour to do away with any and every disadvantage that might exist in relation to the usage of real estate chatbots. It is more than important to realize that technological updates are an essential part of any growing sector or business. For this reason, they are indispensable if one wishes for their services or business to stay relevant in the coming times. The automation of certain tasks is indeed pretty helpful. However, it is also necessary to remember the distinction between mechanical and natural connections, so that man does not become the tool of his own tools.
