Puzzle London: Alex Dixon | How Chatbots Will Solve Real Estate Challenges in 2019

You only have to switch on the news for three minutes before concluding that at the moment, UK businesses are in quite a precarious position. Inevitably, one word that looms over the horizon, causing various industries to quake in fear, is Brexit.

That Pandora’s Box of regulations, redundancies, and reduced Raclette reserves. But did someone say Real Estate opportunities too?

Okay, perhaps it isn’t entirely apocalyptic, especially with the brilliant development and utilisation of Machine Learning that is already influencing our everyday lives. Maybe technology can shine like the Beacons of Gondor, to help enterprises soar in these unpredictable times (more on this in a minute).

It is however no exaggeration that the housing market is experiencing a state of uncertainty. Some experts speculate that we are in a clear buyers-market, with decreased prices caused by fewer international buyers and properties stubbornly refusing to sell. Others suggest that this issue is exclusive to the capital, citing market growth in places like Liverpool and Manchester where prices are still happily rising. Further commentators observe that property prices in London are still ludicrously high, having only ever been topped in early 2017.

So, creating clear digestible trends from such conflicting pieces of information is not always simple.

What is undeniable though, high street companies are struggling, and Estate Agents are not an exception. One can look to Foxton’s six branch closures in the capital as a sign of this, and its stock price misfortunes (shared with the likes of Countrywide PLC).

As alluded to earlier, technologically savvy companies – though not entirely spared from the difficulties of their high street companions – are having an easier time, and boast the potential to thrive in these challenging waters.

Automation, “Big Data”, and so called virtual-assistants all benefit and work in conjunction with this decade’s consumer trend, the need for total accessibility. The modern customer wants results at any time, in any location, and on any device.

To give some perspective, 60% of searches are from mobile devices, and 66% of consumers prefer to contact brands via messages. Furthermore, with 1.3 billion monthly active users, Facebook Messenger is a particularly potent tool.

A refusal to adapt is prehistoric, and inflexible Real Estate monoliths will find their next generation of potential customers seduced and swept away by more agile and progressive companies.

So, how do we keep up with these ever more demanding consumer requirements. Simple – we need to meet customers on platforms that they are most comfortable on.

This is where – *drumroll please* – Chatbots step in, and step up. A versatile digital tool that can assist estate agents by generating leads, substantially lowering costs, cultivating data, perfectly representing the brand, and far more.

What’s more, Chatbots are available round the clock, for your customer’s every need.

7 Key Areas That Bots Will Add Value In Real Estate:

Help Humans, Save Resources

• According to McKinsey, around 30% of customer service positions could be automated through chatbots.
• Bots can easily compile those repetitive, tedious, but so-very necessary tasks, freeing up your workforce to take on more complex and fulfilling areas of work. Undoubtedly, your motivated employees will benefit from this.
• They offer great commercial potential to save Agencies from spending huge amounts on an overpopulated but under stimulated workforce.

Qualify leads and schedule viewings = Resources Saved

New York had a fun one – a Chatbot helped sell 3 apartments, in 10 days, at a cost of €1.6 per pre-qualified lead:

• Chatbots can take potential leads through the first stages of the online customer journey in a seamless, quick, and convenient manner.
• No more form filling: Bots can ask leads questions regarding desired properties, then provide tailored suggestions, which become optimize as the Bot learns.
• Bots can schedule viewings, arrange timings and alert the relevant realtor, when the lead finds a positive property. Bots can even offer 360’ walkthroughs of properties, to further qualify the lead before the viewing.

Databases and Referrals

A quick stat-spree:

• 88%of buyers would use the same agent or refer them;
• 84% of sellers would use their agent again;
• 82% of ALL real estate transactions are referrals
• Yet only 25% of agents cultivate their existing contacts and past clients for referrals – those who do generate more than 50% of their annual business this way!

What if there is a way for databases to automatically update, and for those same pots of gold to mine themselves at the perfect moment, without any time spent?

• If a customer is not ready to arrange a viewing in the first interaction, the Bot can take invaluable information, like how and when the customer wants to be targeted, to be put into a CRM for use in more tailored marketing campaigns.
• Property preferences can be fed back into an ever-improving recommendation system, utilising Big Data, which can then be fed back to the chatbot.
• Bots can initiate conversations with online leads, and chase customers who have visited the website previously, this time providing more relevant suggestions.

Inspire Millennials

As mentioned above, it makes sense to approach customers on platforms that they use regularly:
• Bots can handle quick conversations with the newest generation of buyers on their phone, answering any questions and concerns that they may have.
• This is a sure-fire way to welcome a new loyal audience, who appreciate a brand that is engaging, inclusive, and reputable.

Synergise with conventional paid media

• Paid media campaigns – used in isolation – can be high priced in such a saturated market. Sure, they increase presence, but in competitive industries, bidding against high-budget entities can be very expensive.
• When used in conjunction with one another, the ROI for social campaigns which utilise chatbots are greatly multiplied.
• Chatbots are an exceptionally accessible natural progression from typical campaigns, turbocharging online presence through engaging and efficient interactions.

Converse with potential customers

• Through Natural Language Processing, Bots can understand the potential customer’s written text, and converse in a manner that fluid and natural.
• Typical online form filling, with awkward parameters and clunky options that can be frustrating for customers, is no longer a necessity.
• This interactivity cuts down redundant online browsing time, keeping the customer engaged during their time on the site, with no need to turn to competition.

24/7 representative

• Bots are available at any time to assist the customer, on any device
• When workers are not available on social media, Bots can take care of new leads and provide auto responses and information on potential properties
• Chatbots can personify company values, demonstrating the image and tone that the agency wishes to brand themselves with

These benefits are not restricted to Estate Agents. For example, Chatbots can be a concierge to assist letting agents, answering tenant’s questions, and assisting with payments.

And of course, there is great potential for disruption in wider industries too; just look at how they’re impacting Retail – there is brilliant overlap in the benefits that Bots offer.

So, Artificial Intelligence is not necessarily the malevolent force that we viewed with such animosity and fear after the Terminator films, and we won’t all lose our jobs… who would have thought it?

There is clearly great potential for success in the marriage between Artificial intelligence and Real Estate. With the ability to assist agents, chase referrals, secure leads, and display the company’s desired social persona, they offer value in a range of ways. It just takes a little creative flare, and a clear strategy.


Article Source: http://puzzlelondon.com/2018/11/26/chatbots-will-solve-real-estate-challenges-2019/

Real Estate Chatbots — Do You Really Need Them?

It’s 2019 and the chatbot hype hasn’t died down. In fact, more and more industries are looking to implement chatbots in their businesses to ensure customer engagement and loyalty in the current digital age when the customer is flooded with options (read competitors).
The real estate industry is no stranger to the challenges of generating leads and closing them.
Properties are not something you can pack into your bags and showcase to people.
Hence lead generation in the real estate industry becomes a lot more complex and grueling.
In today’s time of digitization and online presence of businesses, most of the customers are converted from leads online. In such a scenario, letting all that online traffic go is something one cannot afford to do. Intelligent chatbots in real estate help you tap into that traffic in order to collect and convert leads into customers.

Let’s assume a buyer on your website is on the lookout for a new place to move into or seller is looking to sell his/her home. In both cases, the buyer and the seller need immediate answers. However, for a real estate agent that is juggling new and old property listings, evaluating products, chasing their own sales and marketing goals, and managing past clients — it is quite difficult for them to take time out and assess the requirements of an online lead.
Taking time out to ascertain the overall seriousness of the lead from scratch is pretty time-consuming. But, it is a no-brainer that if you wish to be successful when it comes to real estate, you need to capture as many leads as possible to make sure that you have a specific number of clients on a monthly basis.

The bot will handle conversations with clients that are at the top of the funnel — generally people you don’t know and who might be unsure of actually buying/selling the property. The bot can be programmed on tasks like collecting basic information in the form of asking relevant questions and generating relevant answers resulting in an e-mail capture. Additionally, the chatbot can even transfer the conversation to a human agent, if need be.
To get started, one needs to figure out what medium makes the most sense for their business — Facebook, Web Chat, automated email or SMS bots.
If you happen to have a robust Facebook presence with a good following and engagement, it makes sense to deploy a Facebook bot.
If you generate a good amount of traffic on your website, then a chatbot that pops up and assists your visitors in their journey is your best bet.
1. Real Time Enquiry
When a user lands on your website, they can immediately get their queries answered by the chatbots. They do not have to wait for assistance from a human agent in order to seek answers about the property they are interested in.
2. Available 24×7
As real estate agents have time constraints like meeting deadlines, shift timings, it is not possible for them to remain available to the user throughout the day. With chatbots in real estate being available round the clock, 365 days a year — your customer’s queries can be addressed even outside of operational hours.
3. Qualify Buyer and Seller Needs
Using natural language generation, your custom chatbot determines the prospect’s exact needs and relays the required information without you having to step in, or without your customers having to download an additional app.
4. Schedule Property Viewings
Once the prospect is deeper into the sales funnel, the bot can schedule a home tour and in a way, take care of introducing the client and the real estate agent. At this point, the agents or sales team can take over the reigns.
5. Search MLS Listings
The bot can assess a prospect’s search requirements, scan the MLS for relevant and matching properties and then display listings that are active within the chat interface itself.
6. 360-degree virtual tours
Are prospects too busy or too eager to see the property in person? The real estate chatbot has your back. Your prospects can take a quick virtual tour through the bot itself without them wasting time waiting to get an inside look.
7. Logging Conversations
With chatbots, you can keep a log of the interactions that your leads had with your bot. This comes in very handy when the human agent takes over from the bot and interacts with the lead. With access to prior interactions, you have a better understanding of the lead’s preferences even before you talk to them.
8. Automate your follow-up process
As a realtor, you have a lot on your plate other than following up on people who are yet to be customers. Chatbots can be very easily utilized to follow up on your leads via the medium they choose. Whether they want to be contacted via email or text message for more information or would directly prefer talking to the realtor, is all asked to the user.
Follow-up messages or emails can be automatically sent to the prospect without manual intervention. Or if you prefer to follow-up with the lead manually, then that too is possible.
9. Language no bar
Chatbots can communicate with your targeted audience in their language, thus further personalizing the customer’s experience. This also contributes to elevating your brand and increasing customer engagement.
10. Ease of Data Handling with Integrations
Fret not! Implementing chatbot in your business does not add to the data chaos. In fact, data handling becomes a lot easier with chatbots. Chatbots collect information and feed it directly to your CRM or database, without your assistance.
At WotNot, we have worked with leading property aggregators in the Real Estate industry and developed bespoke chatbot solutions that have resulted in pre-qualified leads for their sales team, while at the same time addressing FAQs and customer support.
With WotNot, you can have your chatbot ready in under an hour! So, what are you waiting for? We have the chatbot templates ready for you to experience for free! Visit us at https://wotnot.io/ and experience the chatbot apt for your business for free!

Article Source: https://medium.com/swlh/real-estate-chatbots-do-you-really-need-them-4f9fe892af00

Chatbot Magazine: Varia Mhitarian | 5 Ways AI is Changing Property Companies

In terms of how it is affecting the property industry, AI technology could very well be as innovative an event as the appearance of the internet itself in the mid-nineties, which went far beyond the expectations of its creators.

Rather than being fearful of AI replacing human jobs, companies are starting to embrace automation for a more intelligent way of working and providing the highest level of client satisfaction. Below we will explore the different ways in which smart technology has already been or is on its way to being implemented within the property industry.

1. Automated Property Management

Problems within rented buildings are a constant source of complaint and burden, to which the human element of a property manager also contributes. Things don’t always go wrong between the working hours of 9–6, and waiting for something to get fixed till the next working day may be a problem of the past. Companies such as UK-based Pi Labs are already implementing an AI messaging platform called AskPorter to help residents in apartments have issues within their buildings or inquiries they may have solved quickly and efficiently. All they have to do is log their complaint with the virtual assistant, and then track its progress until things are back to normal.

2. The Recommendation System

Recommendation systems are being used by a multitude of industries in order to provide customers with a wider variety of options when purchasing or making an inquiry. The AI component understands which types of products are liked by users and can then make relevant suggestions to a new person on the site. The technique is seen in both residential and commercial arenas with companies such as Green & Company (and now even our own company, Free Office Finder, as seen towards the bottom of our results page) already implementing the recommendation system.

3. Virtual Assistants

Further to the above system, making the property search experience even more seamless, recent AI programs like Apartment Ocean are providing real estate websites with chatbots that assist potential clients in their search for a property. The user can now ask an automated bot specific questions and receive answers on how to progress their search in a conversation initiated by the program, which is one that a real estate agent would usually have with potential clients. Acting as a virtual assistant and currently being implemented by team messaging app Slack, Apartment Ocean then converts this opening encounter into useful data that can be used to optimise future interactions with clients.

4. Data Analysis

There are multiple ways in which AI is being used in the property industry at the moment for more efficient analysis of data. Building IQ is one of the companies using AI for data capture analysis — it predicts possible areas in a building that will need maintenance based on information it has gathered about the condition of the building itself. Being solely data-based, AI systems can help humans infer the best course of action to take in order to make tenants save energy, money and live in optimal comfort. Brands such as Nest have implemented this energy-saving tactic into their AI-powered thermostat, learning from data that it collects about the individual who has purchased it for their home, while AirBnB uses AI to set pricing on locations based on what previous customers have liked most about a property (e.g. the photos, the geographical location).

5. Building Security

Companies are currently implementing smart technology in order to provide tenants with ultimate security. GateGuard uses facial recognition for apartment building inhabitants as a replacement for a “doorman”, as well as allowing tenants to let in delivery services when they are out, giving facial access through their phone or computer remotely. Office space provider LABS has implemented intelligent recognition software so that employees and clients can use the mobile app to enter the building without needing a set of keys or a key card.

It’s clear that artificial intelligence is not only fast-growing, but has managed to cover a great variety of industries in a small space of time, reaching the property industry, as outlined above. By improving the efficiency of simple management roles, smart technology works as a suitable partner for agents and brokers within the property field, as well as optimizing the tenant experience through a skillful gathering and analysis of data.

Article Source: https://chatbotsmagazine.com/5-ways-ai-is-changing-property-companies-5d7db55f9a27

9 Reasons why you need Chatbots in Real Estate

It’s 2018, and chatbots have now truly evolved to now reach almost every aspect of our lives. Right from Facebook Messenger, to Skype to phones – we talk and interact with them. Some assist us in planning our trips while some crack some jokes. 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.

Back in 2016, big tech players like Facebook, Microsoft, and Google, launched their own bots and chatbot platforms. Ever since then, AI-based applications started to boom, and many interesting bot concepts started to take shape. Like with any other new technology, 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 & enhance their customer service. However, the key here is to continue engaging with customers particularly beyond normal hours of operation & to address questions that don’t really need human input.

With bots being deployed across a plethora of industries such as healthcare, e-commerce, retail or hospitality have made a significant impact in terms of ROI and customer engagement. Bots are well and truly poised to be helpful in the world of real estate as well. 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.

When it comes to assisting a visitor who could be a potential lead for you, here’s how a chatbot can turn a potential lead from lukewarm to hot.

Let us assume a visitor is looking to move into a new place or a potential seller is looking to sell their apartment. In both the scenarios, both parties need quick answers, however, when it comes to a real estate agent or a broker or a developer that is taking care of new and old listings, addressing their own sales and marketing goals, and managing past clients — it is quite difficult for them to take time out and cater to the requirements of a random visitor on their website.

Investing time out to ascertain the overall seriousness of the lead from scratch is pretty time-consuming, to say the least. However, it is quite evident that to be successful in real estate, you need to capture as many leads as possible to make sure that you have a healthy pipeline in place from time to time.

Given that majority of buyers and sellers are starting their journeys online, it is prudent to deploy custom chatbots in real estate that assist them in building their sales funnel.

In today’s time of digitisation and online presence of businesses, most of the customers are converted from leads online. In such a scenario, letting all that online traffic go is something one cannot afford to do. Intelligent chatbots in real estate help you tap into that traffic in order to collect and convert leads into customers.

We all know, in any business, lead generation is the most important and yet the most daunting task. Important, because that is how you come across people who are interested and willing to buy your product. Daunting, because you cannot do this without facing rejections & facing rejections results in a lot of your time being taken up, without any success in getting prospective customers. This leads to frustration and wastage of time.

In the real estate industry, lead generation becomes all the more difficult because of the complexity of the industry.

Properties are not something you can pack into your bags and go door-to-door showcasing them to the people.

A lot of nitty-gritty goes into the process of lead generation solely and it also takes time to figure out what the real estate brokers or agents have to offer & what the customer is looking for. Elucidated below are 9 reasons why chatbots in real estate tend to guarantee success –

1. Real-time Enquiry

When a user lands on your website, they can immediately get their queries answered by the chatbots. They do not have to wait for assistance from a human agent in order to seek answers about the property they are interested in.

2. Available 24×7

As real estate agents have time constraints like meeting deadlines, shift timings, it is not possible for them to remain available to the user throughout the day. With chatbots in real estate being available round the clock, 365 days a year – your customer’s queries can be addressed even outside of operational hours.

3. User Specific

Not everyone is looking for the same type of apartment or property type. Chatbots in real estate are the key element here in providing the customer exactly what they are looking for by probing the visitor with a series of questions and offering relevant information in an interactive manner. This is in stark contrast to traditional methods of collecting information via lengthy forms which in turn, keeps the user engaged till the end.

4. Better Engagement

Earlier we used to have physical copies of forms given out to the people to capture the type of product they are interested in. But, truth be told, most of those forms ended up in the trashcan. They were slowly replaced by online forms, which proved to be better than their 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 real-time basis, responding to their queries and at the same time, collecting information about their preferences.

5. Better Time Management

The biggest plus of any robot is saving ample amount of time. Chatbots are no different. As a realtor, you will not be wasting your time in fruitless queries. You and your sales team will be dealing with a much narrower, filtered & pre-qualified lead base which will save you time and effort. Chatbots work at the grassroot level, by interacting with each potential lead in a personalized manner save the collected information to a database.

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

6. Automate your follow-up process

As a realtor, you have a lot on your plate other than following up on people who are yet to be customers. Chatbots can be very easily utilised to follow up on your leads via the medium they choose. Whether they want to be contacted via email or text message for more information or would directly prefer talking to the realtor, is all asked 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 too, is possible.

7. History of Interaction

Imagine the amount of paperwork it would have taken had you documented each and every reply of each and every lead you have interacted with. Unimaginable, right? Chatbots help you out here by keeping record of all the conversations till date. Anytime you need to look up what the customer had said, you can just refer the logs stored in the system.

This way, trends can be identified between customer and bot interactions. If you want to find out if there’s a particular type of property, belonging to a particular category (area wise, budget wise etc.) garnering a lot of interest, you can do so easily using all the data stacked up in your logs.

8. Schedule Property Viewings

Once the prospect is deeper into the sales funnel, the bot can schedule a home tour and in a way, take care of introducing the client and the real estate agent. At this point, the agents or sales team can take over the reigns.

9. 360 Degree Virtual Tours

With prospects being too busy to see the property in person, chatbots in real estate can give interested prospects a quick virtual tour through the bot itself. This gives them a fair idea of what the property would look like before even scheduling a site visit.

While the above covers the salient features, there are more benefits of chatbots in real estate as covered below –

Cross platform – Not only your website, but various online platforms or channels of your choice like Facebook, WhatsApp, Skype can support chatbots.

Additional functionality – Apart from the information gathered on screen, chatbots also help you get additional information like the location from where the client contacted you (through IP-based information), from which page the bot was invoked and other similar ads the client has surfed through, etc.

Language no bar – Chatbots can communicate with your targeted audience in their language, thus further personalizing the customer’s experience.

Direct database entry & integration with CRM – Data handling becomes so much easier with bots. Chatbots in real estate collect information and feed it directly to the database or CRM, without needing your assistance.

At Maruti Techlabs, we have worked with leading developers and property aggregators in Real Estate and developed bespoke AI based chatbot solutions that have assisted our clients in generating pre-qualified leads for their sales team, while also addressing FAQs and customer support across the smorgasbord of buy/sell/rent scenarios, at scale.

The widespread adoption and advent of bots over the last two years along with the participation of tech behemoths are major indications that conversational AI is no longer just a fad, but well and truly here to stay. Being in real estate, it would be prudent to consider bot-o-mating your sales and customer service process.

Article Source: https://marutitech.com/chatbots-in-real-estate/

ALICE CRUICKSHANK | AI in property: chatbots

Everyone’s talking about Artificial Intelligence, but which solution is right for your business? In this first in a series of guides on AI application, we run through the options for using chatbots in property.

What is a chatbot?
A chatbot is a computer programme that can interpret human language and respond with text or audio. These days chatbots are getting pretty sophisticated, with many programmed to understand natural language – that means it can get the gist of a sentence, even if the user asks it in an unusual way.

While some people may mourn the lack of human interaction, the real benefit of a chatbot is that they will do exactly as trained. Programmers can input every possible question or scenario and the chatbot will know what to say. There’s no such thing as an ‘off day’, or forgetting crucial information. Even better, a chatbot can be available 24/7 and can talk to thousands of customers at the same time.

These days, brand identity is more important than ever before and customers value personality. Chatbots can be programmed to embody a company’s tone of voice and will deliver it exactly without training. Using this form of automation is a great way to keep up with customers’ preferred communication methods too, as AI bots can communicate via channels such as Whatsapp and Facebook Messenger.

AskPorter 2
AskPorter is designed to aid property managers respond to maintenance requests

How can chatbots be used by property professionals?
While there are several ways this technology could be utilised, chatbots are best used for taking care of mundane, time consuming costs. This could be by letting agents using Hey Landlord to respond to constantly asked questions, such as when the rent is due, or where to put the bins out. AI technology is equally useful for booking viewing appointments, as data processing skills ensure double booking won’t happen!

Chatbots can be of great use to both tenants and property managers when things go wrong outside of working hours. AskPorter can be programmed to provide advice for simple maintenance issues, or log more serious problems and even book tradespeople.

Estate agents and letting agents can also benefit from an AI ‘recommends’ function. This takes is consideration the features of previous properties browsed by customers and makes suggestions of other potential listings of interest. Automabots is one company that does just that, using Facebook Messenger to communicate with customers.

Automabots real estate chatbot
Automabots’ system makes recommendations to home buyers via Facebook Messenger

How much does it cost to ’employ’ a chatbot?
There are a few things to take into consideration before purchasing chatbot software. The cost will vary on your AI needs – whether it’s a simple service such as processing repetitive questions or something more complex, such as analysing naturalistic language to make viewing suggestions. Some companies offer customisable programmes, while others provide a completely bespoke solution.

Usually there will be an upfront cost as well as a recurring subscription fee to the company providing the technology. You’ll need a server to host your chatbot, the size of which will depend on the volume and complexity of conversations with customers.

Companies providing chatbot solutions for real estate
Aiva – A virtual sales representative who communicates via Facebook Messenger.

Apartment Ocean – Automates common customer queries, and can also be used to schedule property viewings and maintenance requests.

Ask Porter – Provides maintenance advice for tenants and logs more complex repairs requests.

Automabots – Uses naturalistic language to evaluate exactly the type of properties a customer is looking for and make suggestions, either via a web app or Facebook messenger.

HelloAlex – Designed to respond to customers’ queries extremely quickly to generate more leads.

Hey Landlord – ChatBot answers repetitive questions such as where the gas meter is located or when bins are emptied to free up agent time for more complex queries.

Humley – This AI system can process complex natural language, which can be used to answer social media complaints amongst other functions.

Open Box – ‘Rob Sparke’ the AI assistant is completely customisable not only in what it says but what it takes care of, which means it can be used in many ways.

Article Source: https://placetech.net/products/ai-in-property-chatbots/