Can Chatbots Really Work for Real Estate?

I don’t want to say it in one word, without letting you understand the actual scenario around Chatbots in the real estate industry today.

You probably heard about Microsoft’s artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot, Tay that amazed the public with its ability to converse with Twitter followers. Though it made some inflammatory and offensive tweets that forced Microsoft to shut down it only 16 hours after its launch, still it is one of the best chatbots that came ever by its ability to converse, not by deep sense.

According to Microsoft, all these rampages were happened mainly because of trolls who “attacked” the service as the bot replied based on its conversations with users on Twitter. However, a small, intelligent tweak in its ability to interact sensibly could make it a supreme product to date.

I have shared this story not to scare you about this future-generation technology, but to make you more cautious about adding deep sense to chatbot you would build.

When it comes to the emerging real estate industry, sensible Chatbots can act as a real-time solution to engaging potential customers in a meaningful conversation that turns visitors into leads, leads into customers and customers into loyal customers. It means you can earn more and more loyal buyers, sellers, as well as agents. Considering the demand, mobile app development companies are proposing chatbot development as a value-added service to their real estate customers.

Unlike basic question-and-answer bots, such as Apple’s Siri that can reply to only a single question at a time, Chabot can go into more complex conversations. Let me conclude here that Chatbots can really work for real estate. Let’s see, how it can:

How can Chatbots Benefit Real Estate?

Unlike the travel and other service industries, the real estate industry requires a deeper level customer and agent relationship, where customers take at least a month to make a buying decision, whereas, in the travel industry, decisions are made within an hour. Though Chatbots can’t replace that client-agent relationship, it can enrich the customer experience.

You may feel cool about some practical benefits of chatbots mentioned below:

Provides property details from a huge set of database

Chatbots can quickly pullout results for questions like this – “I’m looking for a property with one acre in Virginia.”

Gives quick answers to this kind of common queries

“Suggestion for a low down payment loan”

Chatbots can ask questions or make recommendations when the buyer is not sure about his preferences.

“Are you thinking about a bigger flat?”

Assists on more deeper questions like

“10 days back, I requested some options on 1 BHK houses in Whitefield, Bangalore. Can you provide it again now?”

Chatbots can learn from previous conversations leveraging machine learning and proactively make intelligent recommendations or give suggestions.

• “Last month, one of our customers bought property in Manhattan area, New York-based on our recommendations. He got fully satisfied with that purchase”. Want to get similar recommendations?”

Who Tasted Success with Chatbots?

Polish real estate developer Nowy Adres S.A. built a bot called Kasia, which has been able to serve customers smartly based on a huge database of company information since 2010.

Advisor Mary, a chatbot deployed on the Slack platform by Apartment Ocean, is serving as a dedicated real estate adviser for U.S. renters and earned good appreciation from customers.

There are many other companies, including Taco Bell (not a realtor), have tasted success by leveraging chatbots to take customer experience to the next level.

Conclusion:

It’s not a matter of if chatbots will help real estate or not. It is all about how effectively we leverage this future technology to drive growth and achieve a competitive edge. To make it a reality, chatbot development companies can help you and guide you as well.

In fact, most of the mobile application development companies  UAE, USA, India, and the UK have widened their service portfolio with chatbot development services. From the customers’ perspective, this is helpful as well as they need not look for other service providers out of their existing app developers.