Are real estate chatbots better than live chat?

Have the robots arrived to take over your jobs? Maybe! But for now, they’re only here to take away the boring and repetitive tasks. A prime example of this are real estate chatbots. 

Now, you may be wondering if this is actually a good thing. Think of it this way: If you have a boring task at hand, and you find an efficient and effective shortcut to do it, would you take the shortcut? 99% of you will say yes. 

Apply the same thing to your work. You’re a real estate agent and find a real estate chatbot that provides quick and quality client support; naturally, you’d be intrigued to check it out. Why? Because providing client support is an extremely time consuming task. 

And I’m sure most of you are already aware that there are hundreds of tools for real estate agents to help them make the client support process easier. Live chat for real estate and chatbots are two of the most common examples. 

Since everyone knows about chatbots and live chat tools for real estate agents, we thought it’d be a good idea to compare them for pros and cons. Before we get too deep into real estate chatbots and live chat tools, first we need a proper understanding of how these tools are helping real estate agents. 

Different real estate chatbots for different agents

There’s no universal algorithm when it comes to conversion tools for real estate agents. The best ways to provide client support vary from agent to agent depending on their schedules and how they conduct business. 

To make it easier to understand, I’ll break down real estate agents into three categories: New, intermediate, and veteran. 

• New agents: These are the new kids on the block. They don’t generate tons of leads nor do they have assistants to assign to  client support. They haven’t established their brand yet so people aren’t very aware of their presence. These are agents who spend more time promoting their business and engaging with active website visitors.

• Intermediate agents: These agents have been around for a while, but they have yet to master their craft. The good news is they’re finally starting to get a hang of things. This means they’re generating a generous amount of leads through their website in addition to other marketing ventures. They often get referred to by other agents as well as past clients.

• Veteran agents: In every sense of the word, these agents are the experts in the field. They know all the ins and outs of the business and have packed schedules to show for it. Their brand is well known and that alone brings them a hefty number of leads. They’re always looking to improve their website to make them look even better, and also generate new and qualified leads every month. They’ll likely not be able to chat with anybody in real time, nor will their assistant.

If you’re a real estate agent yourself, you’ll now have a good understanding of where you are in your career. Out of the tools for real estate agents that are available on the market, you need to cherry-pick the best ones according to your needs and goals. 

It’s important you pick tools that will help you provide high-quality client support. Really, you should pick a tool that gets you the best results with the least amount of work. Like real estate chatbots. So here are three main types: 

• Basic live chat: Connecting realtors with website visitors in real time and through a chat plugin.
• Real estate chatbot: Visitors speak to a fully customised robot on your website, and can request to be later contacted by the realtor. 
• Hybrid model: Visitor speaks to a chatbot, which pre-qualifies them, then brings  realtors into the conversation.

So which of these is the best fit for your business? Let’s find out.

Real estate chatbots: Way less work than a live chat for real estate

First things first, your conversion tool shouldn’t be adding to your workload. Conversion tools like real estate chatbots should make your life easier by automating tasks that otherwise need to be done manually.

Live chat tools for real estate agents can be found in abundance. Let’s say you started using one of these tools on your website. And you get about 10,000 monthly visitors. The average conversion rate for a website is between 2-3%. This means on average, you’d be generating between 200-300 leads per month.

If half of these leads come through your live chat, that means your agents will have to provide client support to at least 10 prospects every single day. And that’s not all. Once the conversation with the prospect is over, the agent will have to manually upload every single lead to the CRM and assign them to the appropriate agent based on the prospect’s requirements. 

Honestly, that’s a massive workload. For a new or medium-sized agency, it’s not always feasible to hire an employee only to handle website enquiries. On the other hand, if you’re a veteran agency with a household brand name, then you’re going to be getting a lot more than 200-300 leads on your website per month. 

Enter real estate chatbots. Good real estate chatbots automatically send leads directly to your CRM so agents don’t have to do anything. Even if you have an assistant who’s in charge of responding to leads, with real estate chatbots you can cut out the middleman and have agents respond even faster to prospects. 

Learn more about how you can use real estate chatbots to ramp up your website conversion:

• What do your buyer leads care about the most?
• Everything you need to know about real estate chatbots.
• Still don’t trust us? Hear conversion tips from a real estate agency founder.

And that’s not all. Real estate chatbots can also easily qualify leads and send them directly to the appropriate agent. Read on to learn how.

Real estate chatbots make lead qualification easier

Your chat agents have to spend a considerable amount of time qualifying customers and understanding their requirements before they can help them. This increases response time and also leads to friction between customer and agent. 

Real estate chatbots collect customer requirements and send the information to your agents to further assist customers. For example, you can ask a prospect to provide you their postcode of the area they’re looking to buy or sell and, based on that, the chatbot can automatically send that lead directly to the agent who’s taking care of that area. 

To further assist the agent, the chatbot can collect more information such as the prospect’s budget, type of property they’re looking to buy or sell, and the ideal time period for all this to be done by. All the agent has to do is look at the information they get about the lead and reach out to them, providing client support accordingly.

Real estate chatbots make a cakewalk of appointment scheduling

With real estate chatbots that support visit scheduling and property tours, it becomes all the easier for a buyer to do market research, shortlist the property, and also schedule the visit – all in one go. Real estate chatbots can be effective in start-to-finish handling this very process.

If you’ve got live chat on your website instead of a real estate chatbot, when a customer asks to book an appointment, the chat agent will have to ask the prospect about their availability and check the appropriate agent’s availability; this results in a lot of back and forth. To avoid this, you can install an easy calendar tool to go inside your real estate chatbots and make appointment scheduling easy for both parties. 

Real estate chatbots can even provide a virtual tour of the property to help the prospect get a sneak peak into what they’re looking at before their inspection. 

So, live chat or real estate chatbots?

What’s the verdict? It seems pretty obvious that real estate chatbots can provide higher-quality client support to a new prospect than live chat. Also, real estate chatbots take a lot off your shoulders with their ability to automate most of the lead generation process. 

Agents really don’t have time to sit down and answer live chat enquiries. They have properties to sell! That’s why our real estate conversion experts recommend using a chatbot over live chat.

Whatever stage your career is in as a real estate agent or agency, you just don’t want more work added to your plate. Live chat for real estate is good, but when you start generating more leads as you mature as an agent or brand, these leads are only going to create more work for you or your employees. 

When you’re starting your real estate website, it’s better to make a smart choice and invest in a real estate chatbot than into live chat. Because at the end of the day, you’re eventually going to need a chatbot either way. 

Are you hungry for more knowledge? Read our latest guides on tools that help you respond faster to customer enquiries and lead routing for real estate agents.