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Live Chat Support
Respond to Website Visitors in Real-Time to Capture More Leads on Your Website (and Leverage AI Chat Bots for 24x7 ROI!)
REVAS provides "Fully Managed" US-based and Overseas Virtual Assistants, specialized in working exclusively with Real Estate Companies. We can help you implement this, and a variety of other Real Estate Workflows, on autopilot!
Goal:
The goal of Real Estate Live Chat Support on your website is twofold:
#1. Provide 24×7 real-time support to your existing Clients, making it easy for them to get fast replies to simple questions any time (day or night), and…
#2. Capture more Leads on your website by providing proactive engagement to your Website Visitors, including capturing Leads on 100% autopilot by using AI-powered Chat Bots (in addition to live human Virtual Assistants).
Due to the complexity of the Real Estate business, including the nature of the regulated conversations between Client and Fiduciary, using Live Chat Support for actual Clients might be limited… but the majority of Real Estate conversations can occur 100% between Chat Bots and human Virtual Assistants!
Plus, by providing proactive Website Visitor Engagement, you’ll instantly start capturing more Leads through your website, while simultaneously providing a higher level of perceived service for your Prospects.
How It Works:
Real Estate Live Chat Support is a fast-changing niche right now, due to the rapid proliferation of more & more powerful AI tools.
While it’s still not possible to use a 100% AI-powered Live Chat for everything (still requiring a real human for certain complex types of interactions)…
… You can currently leverage a combination of AI-powered Chat Bots with live human back-ups to handle pretty much any type of Real Estate-related conversations on your website, 24×7, for a much lower price than any time ever before!
The process of setting up Live Chat Support for your Real Estate Website includes 3 main components:
- The Technology.
- The Scripting.
- The Chat Agent.
Each will be explored in more detail below.
Component 1: The Technology.
There are a lot of ways to implement Live Chat functionality on your website.
It will largely depend on how your website itself is set up, and many Real Estate Websites come “out of the box” with Live Chat capabilities built-in (whether or not they are activated or setup properly is another question entirely).
If it’s not built in to your website, you might also have the ability to easily add a Live Chat functionality using your CRM.
In case you don’t already have a Live Chat functionality through either your CRM or your Website, the good news is, it should be pretty easy to add one (so long as you can get a JavaScript snippet added to your website). Some of the best technology choices include:
- LiveAgent
- Chatra
- Hubspot
- Zendesk
- Intercom
- Olark
- Sendinblue Conversations
There are plenty more options, and the ones listed above vary widely in pricing & features… but at the end of the day most tools available are quite good when it comes to core Live Chat functionality.
Component 2: The Scripting.
When it comes to Scripting your Live Chat Support functions, everything is getting much easier by the minute, thanks to AI.
Many of your Live Chat software choices now will integrate with AI directly, and if not, you can easily go to a 3rd party AI tool like ChatGPT to get complex back-and-forth Live Chat Conversation Scripts written up in minutes!
The most important factors for your Live Chat Scripting are:
a.) Lead Capture Systematization.
Whether you’re using Live Chat purely for Lead Capture, or also including Customer Support, you’ll want to always systematically capture the Contact Info for whoever you speak to!
Make this your number one priority when it comes to Scripting any Live Chat interactions.
b.) Frequently Asked Questions.
The vast majority of your Scripting will revolve around Frequently Asked Questions, or FAQs.
Again, AI tools are changing the game for FAQ creation, because you can literally use an AI tool to brainstorm potential FAQs, then use the same AI to write a simple answer to the FAQ!
You’ll of course need to edit these Questions and Answers to ensure they’re aligned with the rest of your content!
c.) Escalation Policies & Routing.
One of the primary functions of Live Chat will be directing Prospects and Clients to the right higher-up member of your Team to address their issue.
Whether that is a Salesperson, and Support Person, or even directly to you & your senior Leadership Team… it is crucial that you have this mapped out in your Live Chat Scripting so communications go where they need to for proper fulfillment.
Component 3: The Chat Agent.
Finally, even if your Live Chat Support is assisted by AI, you will most likely be needing at least a part-time Chat Agent who can reply to messages & follow up on pending queries.
Unless you are a very small operation, and plan to respond to the Live Chat queries yourself (or with your co-owners), it is likely your Live Chat Agent(s) will be Overseas VAs.
So long as you give them very clear documentation on how to respond, and clear escalation policies for how to route queries that go beyond anything the AI or the VA can handle, then any competent Virtual Assistant will be a great Live Chat Agent!
Pros:
Live Chat Support is a great way to transform a higher percentage of Website Visitors into Warm Inbound Leads!
Plus, by combining AI with a human Chat Agent, you can provide a higher level of support to both Prospects and Clients, building a brand of greater perceived value.
Cons:
There are two big downsides to implementing Live Chat on your website:
#1. Getting Everything Set Up.
Between the technical learning curve (especially choosing the right Live Chat Software for your needs), and then the actual Scripting & Virtual Assistant training process, to initially deploy a Live Chat System you’re happy with is a decent amount of work!
Even delegating to a specialist service provider will still mean you need to really dial in your messaging to ensure everything is “on brand.”
Fortunately, this downside is only a one-time investment.
#2. Ongoing Live Chat Support Fulfillment.
The bigger headache with Live Chat Support is ensuring you actually have Live Chat Agents answering queries in a timely fashion, consistently, on an ongoing basis.
Regardless of the method you choose to staff your Live Chat Support Agent(s), all will have issues of turnover, VA replacement, and technical issues.
It’s important you find the right approach that can work for your business long-term, or you risk Live Chat Support being only a short-term offering that ultimately fizzles with zero to negative ROI.
Work Estimate:
Live Chat Support will require 3 main investments to setup and maintain:
Live Chat Software.
Depending on the rest of your tech stack, the right Live Chat Software might cost $100 – $250+ per month!
On the other end of the spectrum, you might have a free Live Chat functionality built into a different software you’re already using (like your CRM or website back-end).
Either way, you should budget 5 – 10+ Work Hours for the setup process & learning curve (not to mention whatever hard cost comes on top of that).
Part of this process might also include integrating some AI-powered auto-responses to your Live Chat System… but this is getting easier & more affordable by the day!
Live Chat Agent(s).
This will most likely be a part-time Virtual Assistant (or two), working anywhere from 4 – 12+ hours per day (80 – 260+ hours per month).
The most critical factors here will be (a) getting the initial VA(s) hired & onboarded, then (b) finding & enforcing the right schedule for your VA(s) to ensure you’re covering the maximum volume of Live Chat queries in the least amount of wasted Work Hours.
One way to reduce downtime for your Live Chat Agents will be having them work on other Real Estate Virtual Assistant Tasks between chat sessions, but not all Live Chat Service Provider will be able to accommodate this (so it’s important you find the right approach to meet your needs, even if it means hiring a VA directly).