Consumers are increasingly contacting estate and letting agents out of normal business hours, with around 50% of website visits now made when branches have closed.
According to Yomdel, a live webchat service used by estate agents across the UK, 34% of the weekly haul of new leads are generated between 6.30pm and 10.30pm on weekday evenings.
A further 22% of leads come in at weekends, mostly in the evenings.
Yomdel’s audit of its webchats over the last six months also shows that the peak working hours period for live chat traffic is between 11am and 3pm.
This time period generates 22% of the total leads.
This slows down over the rest of the afternoon until everything ramps up again for the evening online rush hour.
At weekends, while volumes do slow a little, there is steady demand, with the evening again being the peak time.
Andy Soloman, CEO of Yomdel, said: “Increasingly, consumers are surfing the net at all times of the day and night and are happy to interact with agents in their leisure time. If agents want to capitalise on potential online leads, then they need to engage with consumers and convert them, round the clock.”
Mark Cooper, partner of Coopers Residential, said: “Since we have introduced live chat to our website, we have seen a 20% increase in valuations and a 14% rise in instructions. In fact, online leads have become our number one source of new business since we introduced online chat.”
Comments (14)
“…with around 50% of website visits now made when branches have closed.”
Let’s wind the clock back – pre-internet (yes, boys and girls – there was such a time…).
Those were the days of ancient rituals:
A time when folks looked forward to the rattle of the letterbox that allowed them to scour the local newspaper for the property ads.
Unbelievably, the same people often carried out an archaic act known as ‘browsing the window cards’ in the Estate Agents’ windows on every High Street.
Some even (shock…horror…) even travelled great distances in petrol-engined (I know – hard to believe doesn’t even cover it…) vehicles and drove around their chosen locations in the hope of spotting a ‘For Sale’ board in a garden.
The vast majority of these long-past rites of becoming a homebuyer all took place at evenings and at weekends – after the long, hard day’s toil, either down t’pit or, if they were really lucky and knew someone who knew someone, sabre-tooth tiger slaying.
(Now I’ll let you into a secret.
There are some who still practice “Ye Olde Ways” – those Dark Arts that had been passed down from Grandparent to Parent and so on to the next generation of homehunter/gatherer looking for their ideal semi-detached cave, within easy travelling distance of hot running water and a scullery area off the parlour.)
They shun the socially accepted “surf’n’dial 24:7” methods and keep the old ways going. No-one ever sees them – cos there aren’t even any milkmen** left on the streets these days.
But I beseech, ye – tell no-one of their being or ye shalt suffer a plague of hedgehogs in ye codpieces.
And I suggest you wouldn’t like that one bit.
** those who need enlightening as to what a ‘milkman’ is (was), I suggest you rummage4.it – you’ll be creased I assure you…
You had your ipad in the pub then.
Even worse, matey – didn’t go near the pub.
Maybe that’s what’s wrong with my life?
Hmmm…
Let’s look at this soberly.
“…around 50% of website visits now made when branches have closed.”
On the basis that most people who would be looking at property websites (read also car websites… holiday websites… in fact MOST websites…) will be at work themselves while the Agents’ offices are open – is that not simply the most blatant ‘No ****, Sherlock’ single sentence that we have ever had our collective intelligences insulted by?
D’OH!! – I typed the above post about four hours ago but had IT issues – now I see that gk1uk2001 beat me to the punchline.
You can now pop into the pub, have a few jars in the full knowledge you didn’t have to stay late and won’t have to queue at the bar as 50% are at home reading your web site, how relaxing that must be. On the other hand maybe 50% are sat around you on one of those new fangled ipads lol.
Part #2
Here’s a couple of the “greetings” you receive from these widgets:
On one site, ‘Bradley’ chirps up after about thirty seconds and blurts out
“Hi, thanks for choosing EweMove. Are you thinking of selling property? Would you like a free valuation?”
On another site, ‘Bruce’ popped up with
“Hello, welcome to Thomas Morris. Do you have a property to sell or let? Would you like to chat?”
And, of course, it would have been rude not to have visited the Coopers site – seeing as they are getting all man-moist (credit: the person who’s goose laid that particular golden egg of descriptive brilliance probably wouldn’t thank me for naming them – so I won’t) about the thing, where ‘Dave’… or ‘Tony’ – someone, anyway – piped up with
” Hi, thanks for visiting Coopers Residential. Are you looking to sell, buy, rent or let out a property? Shall we chat?”
To be frank – I struggled to find any more. The Tepilo ‘person’ kept a low profile – probably not a bad idea as I’d given him/her a hard time earlier this evening for not leaving me alone to browse like I’d requested (always a good test of these gizmos…)
And where are the rest? All the big name Agents seem to steer clear of them.
If I HAD found any more I get the drift of what they would have said – which I slightly paraphrase as “Hello… how can we make money out of you?”
Thing is – if I was to walk into an Estate Agent’s office and be verbally battered around the chops by some snotnose junior neg in the way that the two examples above hit me within seconds of landing on their webpage, I’d be out of there like a cheetah with its nuts set alight by a bushfire.
Sorry to all you lot that think this is the dingo’s danglies – but it’s softly, softly catchee monkey all the way with me – and I will only have folks treated the way I want to be treated myself.
I’ll pass on it.
I would have thought that it was obvious that the majority of people look at agents websites etc after normal business hours, as that is surely when most people have finished work themselves, have gone home and had dinner, got the kids to bed and then can sit down and look at websites, or am I missing something here? And I think that most reasonable people wouldn’t expect to be able to speak to someone at 10pm to book a viewing/appraisal and would be quite happy to wait until the following morning for a call back or to call the agent themselves. I get where the writer of the original article is coming from but if that was really the way forward I’m pretty sure that most agents would be doing it already.
The point here is that when people are looking to select an agent to sell or let their house they are often doing their research in the evenings when the office is closed. While it is true some people may be happy to send in a web form and wait for an answer, the fact is that many just will not bother. They will, instead, just bounce off to the website of another agent down the road from you. If that agent happens to have 24/7 live chat and the visitor can have an intelligent and professional discussion, the other agent is much more likely to get their foot over the threshold for a market appraisal. Even more so if the chat service is also able to directly book valuation appointments while you sleep.
Ah the thin end of the wedge. Just like 24hr supermarkets, Sunday trading etc business’s evolve to the control of the consumer with little regard for the family life of staff. When banks used to shut at 3.00pm, people went to the bank before 3.00pm! All this 24/7 malarkey is about a business taking advantage of a situation that some consumers would appreciate but snowballs out of all proportion to lazy consumers and increased pressure on business when in may cases they could wait till the next day.
Exactly Woodentop.
We have a successful business. If we extended our hours would we have a more successful business or a successful business that has spread its staff more thinly?
And a reminder that supermarkets have retreated from the 24 hours malarkey.
Insomnia Property Services – Catchy!
“In fact, online leads have become our number one source of new business since we introduced online chat.” Well hasn’t that been the case since the introduction of Rightmove, about 16 years ago? Surprised to hear that up until they introduced ‘webchat’, their main source of business was people walking through the door or looking at an out of date newspaper!
People making online enquiries after hours, in my experience, tend to be able to wait until a reasonable hour to hear from an estate agent to book their viewing/arrange their market appraisal. Surely that’s what the website is for, to let people access your properties at all times of the day, not just when you are in the office. Good agents don’t need to be at work until 10pm.