Remember when selling a home meant delivering thousands of leaflets, trying to book in-person appointments, or waiting for buyers and sellers to walk through the door?

We know this is still vital for estate agents, but with more buyers and sellers starting their search online, are you making the most of your website when it comes to engaging leads?

Or are you missing a huge opportunity to generate more deals?

Live chat for estate agents is a great tool in your sales and marketing bag, giving you the opportunity to have conversations with buyers and sellers at the precise time they’re interested in your services.

Whether they’re a buyer starting their journey or a seller looking for an agent to represent them or see what their property is worth, live chat for estate agents can help you win more business.

Here’s how.

The agency experience online

Most estate agents now have a website (you probably do too).

But for the most part, these websites are used as static brochures where buyers can enter their preferences and make a search, or sellers can find your contact information or search for comparative prices in their area when getting an idea of how much their property is worth.

This puts a lot of the heavy lifting on the user and doesn’t fit with the personalised service that the best estate agents offer.

It’s also a huge missed opportunity because live chat allows estate agents to transform their website from a static brochure into a digital help desk, allowing agents to communicate directly with users at the beginning of a search.

Convert web enquiries into sales

Using live chat on an estate agent’s website is a great tool for converting queries into leads and moving customers more quickly down the buying or selling process.

Rather than waiting for users to find your contact information, you can engage with them directly on your website and provide them with what they need.

There are lots of ways to use live chat to help estate agents win more deals online:

Answer questions immediately

When users are making a property search online, they may only have some basic questions to begin with and may not want to speak to an agent (they might fear getting a hard sell when they just have a simple question)

Using live chat, you can answer enquiries immediately and provide a better service.

Build relationships with customers before you speak to them

Live chat allows estate agents to start building relationships with buyers and sellers before speaking with them in person.

This means any meetings or viewings can be more efficient because you already know the basic information you need and don’t need to spend time collecting this information in person.

Engage more customers

Using live chat enables estate agents to be more proactive with buyers and sellers earlier in their property search.

If you look at how many visitors are coming to your website, live chat allows you to more actively engage with them and increase the conversions you can generate online.

Offer virtual tours

With more buyers starting their home search online, virtual tours have become much more popular, especially in the last few years.

They allow potential buyers to get a look inside a new property and are much more effective than pictures at conveying room sizes and dimensions and also give viewers a better idea of the home layout.

These tours can be a great first step for a buyer who is unsure about a property and might need to travel a long distance in order to view a property in person (especially if they’re moving into a new area).

Virtual tours are also incredibly useful for estate agents because they can help eliminate the need for arranging dozens of visits for people who “just want to have a look” around and can be used to remove time wasters.

Using live chat, these virtual tours can be instantly given to a user to view whenever they want and also give the agent the chance to answer questions while the user is ‘touring’ the property.

For example, you could ask a potential buyer what type of property they’re looking for and then send them a few virtual tours of properties that match the search and answer questions.

If the buyer is interested, you could then arrange an in-person viewing.

If it’s not for them, you haven’t spent hours arranging and going to a viewing.

More convenience

As well as being able to provide quick answers to questions and engage customers with virtual tours, live chat on an estate agent website adds an extra level of convenience.

It makes it much easier for customers to contact you, and they don’t need to search your website or make a new search to find your contact details.

It’s also much easier for you and users to send and receive information instantly using live chat (particularly useful when you sync your live chat to your CRM), and also makes it simpler to book in-person viewings and appointments.

You can send users a link to an online booking page and even help them make an appointment.

By engaging users earlier, you can increase the chances of making sales or winning opportunities.

Have more conversations

In an industry like real estate, which is built on relationships, live chat allows you to have more conversations with more people much easier than trying to do everything in person.

Asking questions online earlier on means you can have more efficient and personalised conversations with buyers and sellers when you do come to meet in person, making the buying or selling process much easier and more convenient for everyone.

Engage more out of hours buyers and sellers

Not every buyer or seller is going to be able to search for an estate agent during the day because they’ll also be working.

So many searches will take place in the evening or weekend.

Which means you need to be available for extended hours.

Using outsourced live chat, you can continue to rely on your website to engage with buyers and sellers, providing a personalised experience and booking viewings and appointments for agents hours after they’ve left for the day.

Experience live chat for your estate agents with Face For Business

Find out for yourself how we’ve helped hundreds of estate and letting agents improve the online customer experience and engage more buyers and sellers with our managed live chat and telephone answering for estate agents.

Our PAs have years of estate and lettings experience, so know what kinds of enquiries you deal with on a daily basis.

They act as a member of your team to deliver better customer service and help you make the most out of your website.

Find out more