Chatbots have already made an impact in industries such as healthcare, ecommerce, retail, hospitality and finance and when it comes to chatbots in the real estate industry it’s a no brainer. Real estate is one of the industries where the use of chatbots has many valuable use cases.
The technology has already come a long way and only seems to be getting better as a rapid pace. Be it a real estate agent or a customer, chatbots in real estate prove to be of assistance to both when it comes to saving time, money and additional resources.
Here are 7 benefits for using chatbots in real estate
1. Real-time enquiries
Real estate agents know that if they can respond to customer enquiries within the first 5 minutes then it can increase their conversion by 100%. Well the problem is that real estate professionals already have too much on their plate.
With chatbots on their websites or Facebook pages they can provide instant, real-time responses to customer enquiries regarding buying, selling, renting or a specific property enquiry. Because the prospect doesn’t have to wait for answers, they have a much better experience.
2. Available 24/7
Real estate professionals are not always available around the clock and outside of operational hours. They may even have international buyers in different time zones. Again, the problem comes up of being able to respond quickly to potential buyers and sellers. Chatbots are available 24 hours a day to handle a plethora of common, repetitive enquiries about buying, selling and renting.
3. Increase qualified leads
When it comes to chatbots in real estate, they have revolutionized the way we buy, sell or rent properties by turning long static forms into an interactive experience. In fact, chatbots are one of the most powerful lead generations machines when it comes to real estate.
They work 24/7, they guide prospects down intelligent funnels in an organic and engaging way, and they segment and qualify your leads for you so you can talk to serious leads with all the relevant information at hand. This not only saves time but will make you more money.
If you’re a real estate agent without a chatbot right now then this is the essential tool that you need in your business.
4. Nurture and build relationships
Online forms can’t build trust and relationships but chatbots can allow you to build immediate familiarity and trust. By appearing in their chat app you’re consistently exposing your prospects and customers to your brand and increasing the number of potential touch points with them.
Chatting feels a lot more natural and organic than interacting with a website and online forms or even going back and forth in email for that matter.
To be honest you should be communicating with your customers across all channels and chatbots are a new channel that you must take advantage off. Early adopters get the most benefit.
5. Lower Cost Per Lead
As mentioned above, Chatbots are powerful lead generating machines. By directing your paid traffic to chatbots you can significantly increase your conversions and low the cost per lead. Some real estate agents have seen CPL’s as low as $1.
You can segment and retarget users based on their responses which makes your marketing very specific and laser focused to your target audience.
6. Save time and automate your business
As if this was not already implied…chatbots will automate everything along the customer journey from a cold lead to becoming a warm lead. Chatbots can handle questions about specific properties, they can qualify buyers and sellers, they can provide home valuations, set up appointments and guide the potential customers through your entire process all without your input. The chatbot can then automatically input everything into you CRM for you. This frees up so much of you time all while giving your potential customers the instant responses they want.
7. Increased engagement
First of all being interactive chatbots immediately increase customer engagement in comparison to online forms. Chatbots also require less input from customers because most of the answers are pre-defined, usually requiring a simple tap to select.
Other than that chatbots have open rates of up to 98% in comparison to email which has average open rates of 23%. Getting a message from a company in Facebook Messenger for example a more inherent trust compared to receiving an email from someone you don’t know.
If you want to improve communication and rapport with prospects online then it makes sense to have a chatbot.
There are a lot of other useful things that could be mentioned when it comes to using chatbots for real estate. The usefulness depends on how you implement them and what areas of your business you want to automate. The possibilities are almost endless and the technology is only set to get better.