A Website Chatbot Can Turn Visitors Into Leads
Engage your website audience with an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot. Here's how.
When a prospect visits your website, you have a brief window of opportunity in which to engage with that person.
“Sometimes you have as little as a few seconds before they move on and you [miss a viable lead],” says Ann King, president of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Florida Network Realty in Jacksonville. Her brokerage found a solution 18 months ago in the Roof AI platform, which assists website visitors with an artificial intelligence-powered chatbot they named “Sunny.”
According to King, the chatbot provides instant answers 24/7 and converts serious qualified leads. “Sunny is on our company website, and it helps nurture and engage customers from the very beginning and promotes our total company,” she says.
Depending on how many services are connected to the chatbot, the cost of operating a Roof AI-powered chatbot could range from $2,500 to $5,000 a month, King says.
“Return on investment is hard to measure with technology because it changes so rapidly, but my agents are definitely capturing more leads and moving forward with them. The focus of our company has always been on customer service and raising that bar, and Sunny has allowed us to ensure our customers are immediately engaged.”
Here’s how King’s brokerage makes the most of their chatbot:
1. Virtual concierge
When a prospect lands on Florida Network Realty’s website (floridanetworkrealty.com), Sunny instantly pops up in the lower right corner of the homepage with a waving hand emoji and says,
“Hey, my name is Sunny. I’m Florida Network Realty chatbot. How can I help?” Site visitors are then given the option to click on various categories, such as: “Search for properties,” “Financing options,” “Find an agent,” “Sell my property,” “Find by address,” “Career opportunities,” “Looking for something else” or “I’m just browsing.”
“The chatbot is an immediate engagement starter [equipped with] AI that understands the answer and asks the next right question, tailored to the user experience,” King says. “If someone is looking to buy a home, it asks if they’ve gotten preapproved or thought about what insurance will cost in that neighborhood and things of that nature.”
The chatbot also engages sellers with questions tailored specifically to them. King says: “It will ask, ‘Do you have a home to sell?’ and ‘In what time frame are you looking to move?’ but it always asks if they want to speak to a real person. If the prospect indicates they are moving out of the area, Sunny will cross-reference to our relocation department. Everything is under one roof here; we are a one-stop real estate office and [Sunny] helps us cross-market all of our services.”
Leads can also be funneled from Roof AI directly into the brokerage’s CRM platform or sent via email.
2. Tailored recommendations
Advanced analytics capabilities allow chatbot Sunny to keep learning from its interactions with customers and, subsequently, anticipate what they want. “It looks at the brokerage’s IDX feed and all the available MLS listings and starts suggesting properties similar to the visitor’s initial search,” King says, adding that it keeps people on the page by keeping the conversation going. Once the brokerage captures the business, it can be affiliated across all of their services—from relocation or mortgage insurance to warranty and title. “Roof AI makes business happen, and it makes the consumer feel good and not pushed in any way until they’re ready,” King says.
3. Follow-up tool
King says the chatbot automatically follows up with website visitors on the brokerage’s behalf. “Let’s say the conversation ends and they go off the page after requesting to connect with an agent. A day or two later, Sunny will send an email or text—depending on how the person registered on the site—and ask, ‘Did the agent get back with you? Can we assist you with any more properties?’”
Sunny currently only appears on the brokerage’s main website, but King says they are considering “expensing it” to their agents’ websites. They are also looking into nurturing old leads that go stale in their database by having the chatbot reach out through email or text with a message like, “A while back you were looking at real estate; do you know what’s going on with the market?”
4. Team building
King’s brokerage held a contest earlier this year to familiarize agents with using the chatbot. “We have nine offices, 480 agents and five brokers within Northeast Florida, including all of Duval, Clay, St. Johns, and some of Flagler and Putnam counties,” she says. “We had been talking about how ‘We are Northeast Florida’ because we live and sell the lifestyle of this community. So, we thought, ‘Why not use Sunny to help sell the lifestyle?’”
Agents who chose to participate in the contest were required to take a picture with the chatbot mascot and share it in their social media and marketing. “They would take a photo at their favorite gym or restaurant, for example, and share it [to their sphere],” she says. “The contest was a lot of fun, and it gave [our agents] great photos to market different communities and also use on their website.”
King says that for the most part, people have no qualms about engaging with a chatbot. “There will be those who love it and those who don’t, but we know it has enhanced our [lead] capture and customer service. Engagement has increased and our unique visits to the website and total web traffic are up as well.”
Leslie C. Stone is a Vero Beach-based freelance writer.