Chatbots Marketing

7 Reasons Why You Should Use a Chatbot in Your Real Estate Business

5 min read
Jun 18, 2020
a real estate chatbot selling a house on a yellow background

The real estate business has moved online. Data shows that over 50% of home buyers look for listings on the web. Nothing is surprising about that. The Internet has simplified the search process for customers. On the other hand, it has raised the bar for real estate companies. Now, they have to keep up with their competitors both offline and online. Fortunately, it’s 2020, and plenty of mundane and repetitive tasks can be handed over to chatbots. Thanks to them, real estate agents can focus on what’s most important in this business: relationships.

In this article, you’ll learn how you can streamline some of the work in your real estate business to achieve better productivity and results.

1. Support prospects after hours

Busy real estate agents can’t answer every call or chat from a customer. They’re running around holding meetings and trying to sell or rent properties. However, every time they can’t respond to questions immediately, they risk losing a potential customer. Data shows us that almost 78% of buyers stick with the agent who answers them first. If that’s the case, a real estate agency can either hire a team of agents who can answer prospects' calls, chats, and emails all day round or implement a chatbot.

Smart assistants don’t take breaks and can support multiple customers at the same time. They can take over simple tasks from human agents such as answering common questions, collecting contact details, and promoting rental listings. By using a real estate chatbot, you get a chance to indirectly connect with more prospects and engage them in the real estate sales process.

Engage prospects using a real estate chatbot


2. Qualify leads

Getting a user on your website is half the battle. The second challenge is to keep them there. Chatbot greetings can help you prevent users from leaving your site and engage them with your rental offerings. These are short chat invitations that let you proactively engage website visitors.

With a chatbot, you can create a different greeting for visitors interested in buying, renting, and selling a house, as well as qualify leads based on their needs. This helps to connect prospects with dedicated real estate agents and shortens the sales cycle.

3. Collect rental applications

Chatbots have changed the way people search for rental listings, helping real estate businesses to acquire digital clients much easier.

Instead of filling out long, boring forms, prospects can now effortlessly search for listings while chatting with a virtual assistant. A real estate chatbot can ask users about their budget, types of properties, and the location they are interested in. This helps the bot find matching listings in its database and present them to prospects immediately using attractive cards. Users can quickly verify whether they are interested in the agency’s listings and leave their contact details so you can get in touch with them later.

A real estate chatbot


4. Schedule meetings and property tours

A good relationship with a customer is a building block in a successful sale. Calls, live chats, and face-to-face meetings are crucial in establishing relationships and getting to know customers’ needs. The problem is that you can’t engage with all of your prospects at the same time. You need to schedule meetings. A chatbot can help do that efficiently.

After presenting your rental listings, a chatbot can display your calendar and allow a prospect to schedule a meeting at a convenient time. Because of this, you won’t need to worry about acquiring new contacts. Chatbots will do that for you and allow you to focus only on nurturing quality leads.

Additionally, the real estate chatbot can schedule a call with you or even let a person call your team directly from a chat window. With ChatBot, all conversations are saved in the archives so that your team can easily catch up with a customer’s case and deliver personalized service from the word go.

Schedule meetings using a real estate chatbot


5. Learn about the market needs

If you want to attract renters and buyers, having attractive properties is a must. However, having listings that match your customer’s interests and budget is even more important. That’s why you need to learn the ins and outs of your local real estate market. You can do that by browsing your competitors’ listings, studying demographic information, searching local forums, or launching a chatbot.

A real estate chatbot can have multiple conversations every day and collect a lot of data about your target audience during that time. The information gathered during chats can help determine what types of properties are most often searched for, which locations are the most popular in your area, or what the average budget is for your prospects. By knowing more about your local market, you can tailor listings to customers’ needs and better target your future marketing campaigns.

A real estate chatbot


6. Connect with younger customers

Younger generations are more tech-savvy. Statistics show that more than half of millennials prefer to contact brands via live chat rather than by phone. This is vital information for real estate agents because, in 2018, millennials made up 37% of all residential buyers. By using a chatbot, you get a chance to connect with that group of customers and can stand out from competitors who haven’t adjusted their selling methods to changes in the market.

7. Make the most of your Facebook pages

Social media platforms are the most successful tool in generating leads for real estate businesses. With chatbots, you can make the most of this channel and connect with a much wider audience in real time.

Thanks to ChatBot’s one-click integration with Messenger, you can add a conversational bot to your Facebook fan page without coding. With this functionality, you can answer customer questions 24/7 and deliver a consistent customer experience across multiple communication channels.

“Time is more valuable than money.”
Jim Rohn

A real estate chatbot won't replace your best agents. However, it will give your team a head start and more time to build relationships with customers. This will energize your agents and help more people find a place to call home.

If you’re new to chatbots and don’t know where to start, make use of our real estate chatbot template. You can edit it and add additional elements to create your first virtual real estate agent.