5 reasons why your real estate portal needs a chatbot

28 July 2020 | 4 min read

Some assist us in planning our trips while some answer our most random questions about Mars. 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.

What exactly is an AI chatbot?

A chatbot is a computer program that allows humans to interact with technology using a variety of input methods such as voice, text, gesture and touch, 24/7, and 365 days a year.

For several years chatbots were typically used in customer service environments but they are now being used in a variety of other roles within businesses to improve customer experience and business efficiencies.

What is the technology behind AI chatbots?

Natural Language Processing (NLP)

Natural language processing is used to divide the user input into sentences and words. It also standardizes the text through a series of techniques, like converting it all to lowercase or correcting spelling mistakes before determining if the word is an adjective or verb. At this stage, other factors such as sentiment are also considered.

Natural Language Understanding(NLU)

Natural language understanding helps the chatbot to understand what the user is saying using both general and domain-specific language objects such as glossaries, synonyms, and themes. These are then used in combination with algorithms or rules to construct dialogue flows that tell the chatbot how to respond.

Natural Language Generation (NLG)

Delivering a meaningful, personalized experience beyond pre-scripted responses requires natural language generation. This enables the chatbot to cross-examine data repositories, including integrated back-end systems and third-party databases, and to use that information in creating a response.

Conversational technology takes NLP and NLU to the next level. It allows companies to create advanced dialogue systems that utilize memory, personal preferences and contextual understanding to deliver a realistic and engaging natural language interface.

Benefits of having an AI chatbot

Now that we have summarized the technology behind chatbots, it’s time to see how this technology is improving the real estate industry, and more importantly why every portal should have one.

Here are 5 reasons why every real estate portal should have a chatbot:

1. Immediate responses
2. Available 24/7
3. Better Time Management
4. Better Engagement
5. Automate your follow-up process

1. Immediate responses

When a user lands on your portal, they can immediately get their questions answered by the chatbots without having to wait for a response from a real person. it’s also worth mentioning that Chatbots save up to 30% in customer support costs.

2. Available 24/7

As real estate agents have time constraints like meeting deadlines, shift timings, they can’t remain available to the user throughout the day. With chatbots in real estate being available 24/7 and 365 days a year, your customer’s questions can be addressed even outside of office hours.

3. Better Time Management

Ever since the first robots have been invented, they have been saving us a tremendous amount of time. Chatbots are no different. They spare you from wasting your time on empty questions. You and your sales team will be dealing with a much narrower, filtered & pre-qualified lead base which will save you a lot of time and effort. Chatbots work at the grass-root level, by interacting with each potential lead in a personalized manner to save the collected information to a database.

Realtors can access the database and have all the information about what the customer wants, before making that first call. This way, you’re only concerned with closing the deal and not spending time prospecting or answering FAQs.

4. Better Engagement

Back in the old days, we used to have physical copies of forms given out to the people to capture the type of product in which they were interested. However, most of those forms were ending up in the trashcan. They were slowly replaced by online forms, which proved to be better than their physical predecessors, but at the end of the day, they were still forms that required a lot of input from the customer’s side.

Forms are less interactive and are not much effective when it comes to holding the attention of the customer. Even if a lead fills out the form, they are just providing you information but are not getting any, which they are looking for. With chatbots in real estate, customers can engage in a real-time basis, responding to their queries and at the same time, collecting information about their preferences.

“With chatbots in real estate, customers can engage in a real-time basis, responding to their queries and at the same time, collecting information about their preferences.“

5. Automate your follow-up process

Realtors and real estate portals have a lot more on their plate other than following up on people who are yet to be customers. Chatbots can be very easily used to follow up on leads through the medium of their choice. Whether they want to be contacted via email or text message for more information or would directly prefer talking to the realtor, is all up to the user.

A text message or an email will then be sent to the prospect automatically (based on what you have fed in the system), or if you would prefer to take it from there manually, then that is also an option.

Conclusion

While this article is just scratching the surface when it comes to the endless possibilities that come with the integration of AI chatbots, it shows how it’s making life easier already for realtors and real estate companies. The chatbot takes care of answering all the simple questions that customers may have in an interactive way, leaving the realtors more time to focus on their more important tasks.

Here at Co-libry, we are always looking for ways to get the most out of this promising technology. That is why we partnered with  Portal chat to provide real estate portals with their own chatbots to make their lives easier. And we are continuously looking for ways to improve real estate portals through innovative technologies.

References

https://www.artificial-solutions.com/chatbots#1

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chatbot

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson/2017/10/how-chatbots-reduce-customer-service-costs-by-30-percent/

https://theappsolutions.com/blog/how-to/chatbots-for-real-estate/

https://www.comm100.com/resources/report/chatbot-statistics/

https://www.accenture.com/_acnmedia/pdf-77/accenture-research-conversational-ai-platforms.pdf

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