Conversational AI in real estate may sound futuristic, but the fact is that it’s already here. The CRE Innovation Report 2020 found that almost 49% of commercial real estate executives (CRE) believe that Artificial Intelligence has a great potential for significant cost savings and operational efficiencies, while 43% suppose that it is able to create a major disruptive impact.
The ability of conversational AI to initiate, record, and analyze data is helping real estate create smarter lead generation strategies. It does these tasks at a significantly faster speed and higher accuracy. Ultimately, it is enabling the real estate players to create more personalized, happier, and more informed customer experiences.
“AI allows you to go to the self-driving dimension, which is AI outsources the heavy lifting that’s associated with a real estate transaction: the complex data, compliance, the paperwork, the finding of the home, the negotiation, the offers. I think that really makes a transaction go much faster. It is simpler, and it’s often cheaper,”
Joseph Sirosh, chief technology officer at Compass, a real estate brokerage.
What Realtors Need To Generate, Track, & Nurture Leads
Let’s start with this. It takes two to have a conversation. Pushy, intrusive marketing approaches aren’t well-received by today’s customers, especially the Gen Y & Gen Z who want a well-timed, hyper-personalized customer experience. This is why conversational AI is the smartest solution to generate serious leads for real estate. When you send a text message, there is no guarantee of a reply or any indication of when a reply may come, if at all. And in cases when it does, it is up to you to stay alert and keep the conversation going, every time dependent on a reply. With conversational AI, it’s easier, faster, and at the customer’s convenience. Most importantly, the conversation happens when the customer shows an intent.
Use Cases of Conversational AI in Real Estate
The potential of Conversational AI is limitless. A business can automate all its repetitive communication tasks and utilize the time for critical and other development works. Here are a few use cases of Conversational AI in real estate.
Lead generation– The lead generation process is a critical and time-sensitive one in real estate. Success depends on how fast and smartly they are handled. It starts with identifying leads, nurturing, and leading them towards a deal closure. Conversational AI has made it possible to automate this function with higher accuracy, increased efficiency, and reduced margin of errors.
Handling initial conversations – A Conversational AI bot is perfectly capable of taking the load off from humans to handle initial-level conversations with customers. These bots can do this at a significantly larger scale to reach more leads.
Multiple conversations at the same time – Imagine two prospects are coming in at the same time. One wants to buy a property, and another wants to sell one. These represent two very different sets of needs and profiles. A Conversational AI bot is capable of easily handling both simultaneously and smoothly to increase chances of conversion.
Filtering the best ones out – Being able to handle hundreds and thousands of customers each day, Conversational AI integrated with CRM can segregate the customers with a high chance of a conversion. With periodic calling and lead nurturing ability, AI bot can surface ready buyers and hand them over to a human for taking it forward. Hiltch, Founder of Skyline AI Ltd., said-
“Changes the real estate industry underwent in recent years mean it is now harder than ever to make a profit from property. AI enables people to monitor and scan thousands upon thousands of deals and submarkets in a way no human ever could”
-Hiltch, Founder of Skyline AI Ltd
Data & Behaviour analysis – Investing time in evaluating the seriousness of a prospect/customer from scratch is time-consuming, but it is important to have a healthy pipeline of leads. An AI-powered omnichannel analytics tool keenly observes the key metrics in the conversation and provides actionable insights into why a customer lost interest, why there were negative emotions displayed, why a customer went to a competitor, etc. These behavioral patterns and other data can be used to improve the Conversational AI bot flow for determining the next steps and improving the conversion rate.
An Integrated Experience in omnichannel communications – The average app loses more than 80% of its users after the first three days. A connected, omnichannel conversational AI enables customers to begin with a query on an online chat function and finish it over a call if preferred.
Be where it matters – most of the purchases made by customers are made online, especially in the pandemic era. It is important to address the website traffic because that’s one of the highest sources of leads. Again, a Conversational AI can easily and effectively scale as per the demand, maintain the load, and deliver a smooth experience to all the customers.
Automated follow-up – Often, it’s difficult for a human to do follow-up calls at unofficial hours. A chatbot can easily handle such calls when customers ask for them.
Schedule property viewings (Online & Offline) – Once a prospect is led down the sales funnel, a request for a site tour, whether in person or virtual, will surely come in. an AI bot can schedule such requests and assign it to a human who can step in and take over. The chatbot can suggest virtual tours to get a sense of what the property looks like even before a customer has to invest time in visiting the site.
Creating a Futuristic and Sustainable Business In Real Estate
Customers are increasingly getting used to a hyper-personalized treatment by brands, and they are more demanding than ever. There is no indication to believe that the real estate industry will be treated any differently by them. Early adopters will always bear the fruits of being the movers and shakers as the marketplace identifies them as leaders in their business.
The choice is between staying in the status quo, spending precious time in manual, brain-draining tasks for the rest of your real estate career, or adopting what your peers have already started to use, i.e., Conversational AI in real estate and unlocking its potential for your business growth. Which one will you choose?