Real Estate Industry

How SMS Bots Can Improve Lead Generation in Real Estate Business – JustCall

In real estate, simply generating leads is just not enough. It is important to analyze the quality of these leads and build relationships with them. It is important to recognize each and every lead as a customer.

However, the issue arises when these leads can come to you in real estate at any time of the day. Staying responsive to them 24×7 is not humanly possible. However, what is responsive is your company’s very own SMS bot.

The SMS bot hype is still on the rise. SMS bots are being implemented by an increasing number of companies.

This would, in the larger scenario, help shoot up your business’ customer engagement. The more positive the customer engagement, the more loyal your customers are to you.

SMS Bot for real estate

Before we get into why and how to get a brain for your business phone number in the form of an SMS bot, let us first understand what exactly an SMS bot is.

What is a Real Estate SMS Bot?

First things first – what is an SMS bot? Take a scenario – when you call your bank, your first point of contact is a computer. This computer asks you to send it replies as number inputs via your keypad. For e.g.,

Select 1 for Account Balance

Type 2 for General Enquiries

Choose 3 for Mobile Number Registration

The list goes on.

As and when you press the relevant numbers, the conversations flow. Once the computer has gained enough information, it can proceed in two ways.

It either patches you through to an agent behind the phone or the conversation concludes when that is not deemed necessary.

Very similar is an SMS bot. Imagine all this conversation going on in messages. That is exactly what an SMS bot does. It provides conversational content support to anyone making queries via text message on your company’s SMS-enabled number.

How is an SMS bot Relevant to the Real Estate Industry?

Previously, listing properties or looking for properties on real estate websites was a tedious process. Making general inquiries was tough and time-consuming too.

You had to talk to an agent on the phone or in person. The entire process would take up a lot of time, owing to how many follow-up calls one would have to make or the number of times one would have to visit their office to talk about it.

Alternatively, many real estate businesses started providing the ease of filling out online forms. You could fill up your requirements, queries, etc., in an online form, and someone from the company would contact you in a day or two, or maybe never.

But how much of an ease is it really? Who really wants to sit and fill up a 20-30 field long form?

SMS bots have revolutionized the way someone would get in touch with a real estate company. In the new age of rapid texting, you simply have to send a text to the company’s number, and you are already all set.

How an SMS Bot Helps Your Customers Get Started

A majority of real estate leads are generated online. Accordingly, the first point of contact your lead will have with your company is your SMS bot. One might wonder how these SMS bots actually kick off these conversations.

SMS bots are very direct, to say the least. They instantly catch keywords in the person’s sent texts and help them get started with their quests. Here is a real estate chatbot example of how a conversation with a chatbot can follow:

Hi 

The SMS bot catches this keyword and texts back previously set answers to this keyword. Standard replies are – ‘Hey, how may I help you today?’ or ‘Hello, what are you looking for today?’

I want to buy a house.

Usually, the SMS bot will catch the keyword ‘sell’ in the long sentence. It will then send a response fixed to this keyword. A sample response is – ‘Which area are you interested in?’

Jackson Heights, New York.

The SMS bot would catch the location and accordingly ask follow-up questions.

How many bedrooms would you require in the house?

OR

The customer could keep asking questions to the bot. For e.g.,

Which areas in Manhattan are safe to live in?

The SMS bot would then send a menu of items.

Are there any current listings in Jackson Heights to buy?

The SMS bot would fetch a dynamic webhook and send the customer the follow-up text reply.

This is just a sample of text follow that would take place once a customer asks the bot a question. The bot could ask follow-up questions in the form of text replies.

This helps set the tone of the conversation. Your leads get a direction in which to proceed ahead. The bots keep asking relevant questions or redirecting the leads to the information they are looking for.

Besides that, SMS bots perform the following functions for real estate businesses:

1. Personalize Recommendations and Property Searches

Real estate chatbots can use customer data such as location, budget, and property preferences to provide personalized recommendations for properties that match their criteria.

Customers can search for properties via SMS by sending specific keywords or phrases to the bot. It saves customers time and helps them find properties relevant to their needs and interests.

2. Provide Instant Access to Property Information and Updates

Real estate AI can provide customers with instant access to property information such as pricing, features, and availability.

Customers can message the real estate bot to receive detailed property information or updates on new listings that match their criteria. This way, they can stay updated on the latest available properties.

3. Schedule Property Visits and Appointments via SMS

With real estate bots, customers can schedule property visits and appointments directly through SMS.

They only need to send a message to the bot to request a viewing or meeting, and the bot can confirm the details and send a reminder before the appointment. It can save customers time and make it easier for them to check out new properties.

Why You Need to Get More Excited About SMS Bots

An SMS bot can send replies either in the form of text, dynamic webhooks, or menus. They offer increased engagement and response rates compared to email and other marketing channels.

An entire workflow can be easily set up, which takes care of every possible query or response from the customer. So, they are not only convenient and accessible for customers but also cost-effective and time-saving for businesses.

At the end of the process, all the information provided by the leads is usually logged into the company’s database, thus creating a portfolio of the lead. Companies can reach customers in real-time and provide personalized interactions that drive results.

Alternatively, after collecting all requirements of the customer, these bots can redirect the leads to the most relevant property listings for them to look at.

Let us now have a more detailed overview of the benefits of real estate chatbots.

SMS Bots Make Your Business Omnipresent 

Imagine this – someone wants to purchase a property in Area X which is several miles away from their current residence in Area Y. They simultaneously need to purchase a new property and sell their old one.

This is a major business opportunity for your company. Everyone involved in this scenario requires quick answers. However, here’s the twist – this someone is making these inquiries way past your business hours for the day.

One way to tackle this is by hiring a support team for the night shift. An average-sized company would require at least 5-6 support people on their team for the work.

Imagine the number of resources and money that would go into hiring, training, and keeping a support team on your payroll.

SMS Bot

Additionally, night shift employees require several other amenities – snacks and beverages, security, a cab service, a completely functional office, and much more.

An alternate and much simpler way to tackle this is by implementing an SMS bot on your business phone number. An omnipresent SMS bot would take care of all your leads 24×7. That too without internet reliability.

After collecting all relevant information from the lead, the SMS bot will either log the information in your CRM or show the leads relevant property listings, schedule property visits, or simply do all of it.

This way, real estate chatbots enable businesses to reach a wider audience through mobile devices.

Further, they can integrate them with social media platforms and other marketing channels, allowing you to connect with customers wherever they are.

With SMS bots, businesses can thus stay on top of customers’ minds and engage with them on their preferred channels.

Generate Highly Qualified Leads Using SMS Bots

How many times does it happen in business that someone gets in touch with you, provides incomplete details, and then vanishes off the face of the Earth?

An SMS bot would not only help in providing your leads the information about what they want but also give you what you want – better and highly qualified leads.

The more precise information you have on your leads, the higher your chances of actually closing a deal with them. A happy customer is one who feels valued and well-understood.

An SMS bot would not simply ask the lead for their contact information and then send a confirmation about a callback sometime soon. It will rather delve deeper. It will catch keywords in your customer’s replies.

Then, it asks all relevant questions about the nature and extent of their query.

With the collected customer information and preferences, the bots can perform personalized interactions and targeted messaging. This will allow businesses to create more effective lead-nurturing campaigns.

Further, SMS bots can use real-time tracking and analytics to measure lead generation and conversion rates. They can track the number of messages exchanged, the types of inquiries made, and the response time.

These data can be used to optimize messaging and improve the customer experience.

A quick fact: National Association of Realtors found that 56% of buyers that find their home on the Internet are younger than 36 years old. 

Nurturing Better and Stronger Customer Relationships Using SMS Bots

Filling up a long type form online won’t make your lead feel like they are being valued. More often, the information gathered from these forms is never actually worked upon by the company.

Even if it is, the whole process is very mechanical and impersonal.

SMS bots help you lay a very personal foundation for each of your customers. Their first point of contact is a conversational bot that asks them all the relevant questions (besides answering the customer’s queries in the first place).

Plus, they might not have even thought of some of the queries, so it allows your prospective customers to feel like the company is well interested and vested in their query and wishes to dig deeper to help them better.

From the get-go, the lead feels valued. They would invest more trust in your company since it would assure them that their property or search for a property would be handled with care.

Remember, for your company, you might simply be selling properties, but for your customers, these properties are not just pieces of land but their current or future homes.

Since the SMS bots would be friendly and attentive and ask all sorts of relevant questions, customer relationships are better nurtured.

Besides personalizing conversations, SMS bots allow for timely follow-up messages and updates, enabling two-way communication and feedback from customers.

By providing exceptional customer service and support, businesses can nurture better and stronger relationships, leading to increased customer loyalty and retention.

Complete conversational History – Logging and Tracking

Imagine having to collect a plethora of information from the prospective customer on the phone or in person and manually logging it into the system. On top of that, imagine the many blunders one would make in case there’s an error in logging.

An SMS bot assists in error-free and easier information logging. The complete conversation the bot has with the lead will be automatically logged into your CRM.

This not only helps in creating a highly qualified customer base but also helps when an agent takes over the conversation.

The agent would have all the previously fetched information in front of them. This would help them assist the customer better.

A clueless support agent is of no use to anyone. With an integrated view of all the information, the agent would provide seamless assistance to the lead.

Moreover, this cuts down manual labor in terms of time and effort invested. No one from the company would have to dedicate a major part of their day to boring and manual information logging since the SMS bot would do it for them.

Further, the bot keeps track of all customer interactions and inquiries for future reference. This helps improve communication and collaboration among team members, leading to enhanced customer experience and satisfaction.

With this information, companies can analyze and improve their customer service strategies, resulting in improved business outcomes.

Automate Scheduling and Follow-Up Processes with SMS Bots

Once the SMS bot has all the relevant information it needs to understand the requirements of the customer, it will either patch the customer through to a qualified person in the company or redirect them to property listings.

However, this is not all that it can do.

SMS bots help your leads schedule property viewings. They simply redirect the customer to a viewings scheduler system where they simply have to select the date and time they would be coming by the property to check it out.

Additionally, SMS bots help schedule a complete follow-up process. An entire workflow of follow-up messages and/or emails can be scheduled by the company.

All you need to do is integrate the SMS bot with CRM and other business software systems. Then, the bot would automatically send customers follow-ups timely and without any need for human interference.

SMS Bot

With the complete process highly automated, think of all the time and effort one could save.

Generating new and highly qualified leads is automated. Logging information in your CRM is automated. The process of onboarding new sellers is automated. Nurturing better relationships with customers is automated. Providing 24×7 customer support to your lead’s inquiries is automated.

Your business is automated.

Final Thoughts: Leave No Customer Behind

Keeping in the spirit of the military ‘Leave no man behind’ motto, leave no customer behind in your business. SMS bots help you provide direct assistance and support to all leads making inquiries.

Even if a customer makes inquiries or asks for updates at midnight, way past your business hours, your SMS bot is ready to serve. They not only serve as the first point of contact but also more or less automates the entire process.

There are no two thoughts about whether your real estate business needs an SMS bot or not. Your business will cut down on a lot of effort, money, and time lost on coordinating with leads.

With so much automation working in the background, your real estate business develops a brain of itself.

The best part about this is that this brain is not all logical and impersonal. It is highly attentive, speaks the language of the leads, and is friendly. Who wouldn’t want a compassionate brain automating a major portion of your real estate business?

So, adopt SMS bots for your business today to stay ahead of the competition. Streamline your communication processes, improve customer engagement, and boost your bottom line.

Don’t wait; start exploring the SMS bot feature provided by JustCall.

Deepan heads Demand Gen at SaaS Labs. A data-driven marketer, Deepan is extremely passionate about enabling early stage SaaS companies & accelerating their growth

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