More than half of enquires to estate agents are made outside of business hours, a software provider has claimed.
Reapit claims 57% of internet visits are made out of hours and claims to have come up with a way to help estate and lettings agents respond and compete with online-only brands.
It has launched RPS digital, which allows vendors to make valuation bookings and buyers to arrange viewings by displaying live availability from the agents’ diary, rather than having to wait for a call back from the agent the following day.
RPS Digital can also be integrated with other service providers including Homeflow, Moneypenny, Valpal and Fixflo.
Simon Whale, director at Reapit, said: “At a time when consumer service expectations are at an all-time high and agency competition is stronger than ever, traditional agency models are coming under scrutiny.
“To successfully acquire and retain customers, agents must adapt and evolve to become more flexible and responsive.
“RPS Digital provides an end-to-end solution that is fully integrated with RPS and means that agents’ customers get all the benefits of traditional estate agency with the convenience of the 24/7 online model.”
Comments (6)
Many fair points well made, but we’re talking about running a diary here, if you are so busy you can’t do it hire someone or you’re too cheap to do the job most people in my experience expect me to do, if you look at PB I’m about double on average so there is an argument that I’m also a circa 1k agent, is costs the first k just to get it out there after that I get nothing without work, and our objective align
“Reapit claims 57% of internet visits are made out of hours”
What’s an internet “visit” – a website visit? A website enquiry? A RM/Zoopla enquiry for more information or a request for a viewing?
Seems a vague unsubstantiated figure just to publish an advert on here.
Far from an unsubstantiated figure. We examined over a quarter of a million applicant registrations for over a thousand offices for this. It’s a figure from quite an extensive piece of research. Mostly from the portals, but also agent websites. You can get a copy of the full analysis here:
http://showcase.reapit.com/irr/
Loving the Estate Agent Memes on FB btw.
More than 1/2 of the enquiries that we follow up when we arrive in the morning have either forgotten they made the enquiry, have enquired about properties all along the coast or never reply to calls or email. Can you imagine the chaos of leaving the public to organise our diaries? Appointments will still need too be qualified
We tried to offer online bookings with our first product ViewPro, and you’re right Jeremy no agents want unqualified appointments booking into their diary.
Based on that feedback we build LeadPro, which responds to portal enquiries with a questionnaire (that the agent chooses) to qualify them as a valid lead.
It’s free, and would solve the problem of 1/2 the people forgetting they enquired. Would you like to try it?
If you do want to! email me sam@propertytechnology.co.uk
Jeremy1960 I think thats a very interesting point, and there’s no doubt there’s a load of tyre kicker leads. Agents aren’t short of leads in general they’re overwhelmed with holding a consistent level of service for all whilst getting to the hot leads quickly.
The way we’ve designed this is not to impress upon our clients a particular way of working. Some love the immediacy of being able to get it in the diary straight away. The largest survey of its kind the Academy Vendor Survey highlighted that contrary to perception that most vendors see an army of agents, in actuality 54% of vendors only saw 1 or 2. Having a tool like this at least bagsies (showing my age) one of those spots.
Other clients however as you say want to give themselves breathing space and have a full qualification period. The diary has fuzzy logic that allows you to specify open and closed periods and of course the wording you use is all important. You can specify that someone will be coming back to you to confirm the appointment if you wish.
The key to this one for us is its doing what technology is meant to promise that of giving you efficiencies, where some other smoke and mirror diary booking systems still mean an administrative nightmare in rekeying into CRM diaries.
On a wider point of course there are numerous studies that show the importance of responding quickly to win business on the Internet is imperative.