Customer experience is the one factor that determines the success of all businesses across the entire spectrum of industries in the United States. Being that you and your competitors offer similar products and services, your customer service is your best opportunity to set your company apart from the rest.
Many real estate companies are utilizing modern call centers to bolster their customer service and enhance their marketing efforts. A lot of real estate agencies have had to go virtual in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, and virtual call centers made their transitions much easier. They’ve used this modern technology for everything from improving workflows to virtual agent automation. Continue reading to learn about three ways in which residential and commercial real estate companies have been using virtual call and contact centers to maximize their customer experience.
1. Chatbots
One of the great trends that have arisen as a result of technology is that almost everyone does a portion of their shopping online. People don’t usually make large purchases like homes and cars online, but even so, they still use the internet to do their research on these products before investing thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars.
It’s nice to have people visiting your website, but you need the right tools to get them to engage with your web pages and possibly become customers. Virtual contact centers utilize artificial intelligence-powered chatbots to engage customers and determine what services customers need.
The chatbots initiate contact with customers and, through machine learning, can respond and offer solutions in real-time. When homebuyers visit a realtor’s website, they might converse with chatbots that offer to guide customers on virtual tours of properties or ask them if they would like to apply for pre-approval for a home loan.
Contact center AI enables realtors to automate customer interactions to produce leads. As you can see, there are plenty of use cases for AI across many sectors of industry.
2. Seamless Support Across Various Channels
As you read in the previous section, people love to use the internet to aid them in their decision-making when researching large investments like houses and automobiles. Even though they use artificial intelligence and automation to engage potential homebuyers on their web pages, human agents also use virtual contact centers to provide expert real estate services via live chat.
Chatbots initiate contact with websurfers, but once they get to the root of the customers’ concerns, the bots often connect them with a human agent. This allows real estate agents to provide personal service to potential customers on the internet and increase the chance of luring homebuyers with their website.
Another great thing about virtual contact centers is that they allow seamless transfer from one communication channel to another. Even though people like to do a lot of their shopping and product research online, they still prefer to speak with a human agent over the phone.
Virtual contact centers allow potential homebuyers to start a live chat online and carry the conversation over to the phone lines and maintain contact with the same agent. This seamless switching from one platform to another not only makes customer service more convenient, but it fosters trust between customers and your customer support personnel.
3. Interactive Voice Recognition
Making customer service more accessible to customers is a great way to improve the customer experience. Sitting on hold and waiting to speak to the right agent to get the solutions you need is like sitting in a traffic jam—no one likes it.
Interactive voice recognition allows callers to speak to an automated system that uses artificial intelligence and speech recognition technology to troubleshoot customers’ concerns. IVR systems are so advanced that they’re able to understand customers speaking in their natural language, meaning they don’t have to try to sound robotic for the IVR software to understand callers.
