Thoughts on having an Agent available 24/7 ?

[Harvey Gill]

Thinking about how we can improve our online presence and client engagement. The topic of AI keeps coming up, and I'm particularly interested in how it could be applied directly to our websites.

I've noticed more real estate websites recently that have AI agents installed to interact with visitors. They seem designed to handle tasks like:

• Answering market/property questions 24/7,
• Recommend users relevant listings based on their criteria.
• Identifying potential leads and gathering basic contact information.

The promise seems to be twofold: delivering faster, more personalized value to site visitors and automating some of the initial lead capture/qualification process for brokerages.

What are your initial reactions to this?

• Is this something you've considered or even implemented?
• Do you think clients would find value in interacting with an AI for initial queries?
• Could this realistically help filter leads and make our follow-ups more effective?
• Any potential pitfalls or challenges you foresee?

Would love to hear your perspectives ?

PS: One major pitfall that continues to come up is that AI stating something foolish, which is increasingly becoming unlikely.

[Stephen Morales]

Quote from @Harvey Gill:

Thinking about how we can improve our online presence and client engagement. The topic of AI keeps coming up, and I'm particularly interested in how it could be applied directly to our websites.

I've noticed more real estate websites recently that have AI agents installed to interact with visitors. They seem designed to handle tasks like:

• Answering market/property questions 24/7,
• Recommend users relevant listings based on their criteria.
• Identifying potential leads and gathering basic contact information.

The promise seems to be twofold: delivering faster, more personalized value to site visitors and automating some of the initial lead capture/qualification process for brokerages.

What are your initial reactions to this?

• Is this something you've considered or even implemented?
• Do you think clients would find value in interacting with an AI for initial queries?
• Could this realistically help filter leads and make our follow-ups more effective?
• Any potential pitfalls or challenges you foresee?

Would love to hear your perspectives ?

PS: One major pitfall that continues to come up is that AI stating something foolish, which is increasingly becoming unlikely.

 It can be beneficial and nice if implemented properly. The biggest issue is training your bot thoroughly so they can essentially handle 80-90% of inquiries without assistance. 

I would say most users are tired of working with chat bots instead of actual people. Our users are thrilled that they can actually talk to an actual person vs our chat bot being an only option.

Fun fact, our bounce rate has dropped 30% since we stopped having our chat bot greeting people when they login or show up on our landing page! In fact it hardly gets used anymore and when it does it's people that actually need it for something specific or it's after hours. 

I would say it's great to have as a feature and something people can use after hours, but you should have live REAL agents ready to answer any questions that the bot can't answer during business hours. People want organic help and touch, not more AI help or ads.