Looking to scale your real estate business’s client engagements on WhatsApp? Here’s how you can use a WhatsApp chatbot for your real estate agency.
Top uses of WhatsApp chatbots for real estate
Generating leads
This is one of the most effective ways for you to use your real estate chatbot on WhatsApp. If a prospective client gets your WhatsApp business number from someone in their circles or from one of your other digital properties, or they reach your WhatsApp number via a WhatsApp click-to-chat widget or a QR code, they can have a conversation with your chatbot and get all their queries answered. The bot can then collect information about these prospects and automatically store it in a CRM or a spreadsheet that you and your team can access and use to drive marketing campaigns.
Qualifying leads and building profiles
Not everyone who interacts with your business turns into a lead… and honestly, you don’t even need them to. You don’t want to waste your time having conversations with every single person who comes across your business. Your sales team’s time would be better spent having conversations with people who have a genuine interest in buying, selling, renting property, etc.
That’s where your WhatsApp chatbot can come in and have the initial qualifying conversations with prospects to see whether they’re actually interested and have the ability to do business with you.
Your bot can also ask them questions about the types of properties that they’re interested in, so that when your agents actually have a conversation with them, they have all the information they need and are prepared for the conversation.
Answering prospects’ questions about properties
When prospects are looking for properties, they’re bound to have some questions to which they won’t be able to find answers online with ease. These questions could be about average of monthly bills, the history of the property, and previous owners or tenant. Rather than having to manually answer these questions repetitively, you could just integrate your WhatsApp chatbot with your real estate agency’s database and have the bot directly pull information from there. You could also use the bot to answer questions that the prospects may have about your agency, policies, working hours, etc.
Scheduling property viewings
Your chatbot can help your prospects book a property viewing in person with your agents. The bot can even have an integration with your team’s calendars so that it can show your users what times slots are available on specific dates and allow your users to pick the time slots that work best for them (and for you). Your real estate bot can even send out reminders to these prospects on WhatsApp a day or so before their scheduled property viewing.
Follow-ups
You don’t want to leave your prospects in decision limbo for all of eternity after the property visit. It’s always a good idea to follow up with them, and your chatbot can automatically do that for you. The WhatsApp bot can ask your prospects whether they’re ready to go ahead with the deal and, if they’re not interested in that property, it could even show them other options and provide them with suggestions. Following up with prospects keeps them engaged with your agency and makes them less likely to hop away to a competitor.
Mortgage options
Your chatbot can even help your customers check whether they qualify for a mortgage and see what options are available to them. It could even offer your customers tips on how they could qualify for a mortgage. Your real estate chatbot can even be connected with your partner banks and lending institutions to notify them about prospective customers and let your users apply for a mortgage directly over your real estate WhatsApp chatbot.
Analyzing trends
Your real estate WhatsApp chatbot can keep records of your conversations with your customers and you can also use the analytics dashboards on Engati to understand customer behavior. You can also export this information to understand your customer behavior with other analytics tools and figure out the trends that aren’t just pertinent to the broader market at large, but reflect your own audience and target market. This will also help you make better predictions about the market conditions, investment opportunities, property buying, and prices.
Property valuation
Prospects can use your chatbot and answer some necessary questions about their property like the location, floor space, etc. to get a ballpark estimate on the property value according to current market conditions. This is still a rough estimate, but it will help your customers. After checking the valuation, the users can even book an appointment with your agents to get a better idea of the value.
WhatsApp broadcast templates for real estate companies
New property listings
Just got new properties on the market? You don’t need to manually reach out to all the clients who would be interested in that type of property. Just build a broadcast list of clients who would be keen on purchasing a property like that and use your WhatsApp chatbot to shoot the message out to all these clients.
You could even use a broadcast to let your clients know about a price drop on a property that they’re interested in.
Here’s a WhatsApp message template that you could use for this:
Hi, a new <property type> at <location> is now on the market. Would you like to take a look?
<attach pictures of the property>
Reminders for property viewings
If you’ve got a property viewing scheduled, you shouldn’t just expect your client to remember it and show up on time. Sometimes they could forget or things could come up that mess with their schedule. To ensure that your agents’ time isn’t wasted, you should use your WhatsApp chatbot to send a message out to these customers a day in advance and remind them about the scheduled property viewing. Here’s a message template that you can use:
Hi, see you tomorrow for the property viewing at <time>
Here’s the address again - <address>
Call-backs to favorited properties
If your customers have shown interest in specific properties or marked and favorited these properties, you should try to reel them in and get the sale. Use a WhatsApp template message to send messages that are personalized according to the properties that are most relevant to the customer.
Here’s a WhatsApp message template that you can use:
Hi <name>, did you like <property name> at <location>? Let’s give you a tour?
<Button - Book property viewing>
Collecting reviews
After a client completes a purchase or signs a rental agreement, its the perfect time for your to reach out to them for a testimonial or a review. The bot can collect their testimonials for you, so that they don’t need to go through the effort of filling a form. You could even run an NPS survey over your chatbot to see how satisfied they are with your services and how likely they are to recommend your real estate company to their friends and family.
Here’s a WhatsApp message template that you can use:
Hi name, hope you’re enjoying your new <property type>. We’d really appreciate it if you could leave a review for us right here in this chat. Thanks a lot!
Real estate WhatsApp chatbot best practices
Use it with live chat
There are going to be a few complex, situational queries that artificial intelligence cannot answer. That’s where your real estate agents could come in and answer those questions live over a quick chat.
Go multilingual
You need to be able to speak your customers’ language. Wherever your real estate agency is doing business, your WhatsApp chatbot needs to be able to converse in the local language. Engati’s intelligent real estate chatbots can answer questions in 50+ languages on WhatsApp.
Omnichannel
WhatsApp is the channel over which your customers interact with you the most, but they still want to be able to interact with you over other channels as well, and continue where they left off on these channels. With Engati, your bot and agents can interact with customers over WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, and 10+ other channels. Your bot and agents will also have context across these channels and they won’t have to restart their conversations whenever they switch across channels.
