– 7 October 2019 –
Does your Letting Agent offer 24-hour response to applicants?
Here at Excel, we are always looking at ways to enhance our performance in all aspects of the services we provide, as the world around us continues to evolve. One area that we have focused on recently is communication and specifically the way that we as a company respond to prospective tenants. Traditionally, Lettings Agents are open to converse with applicants during office hours, maybe an hour or two outside those times if someone is checking emails on their phone at home. In reality, this isn’t enough. With the way the world has change in recent years, consumers are much more fluid in terms of when they want access to companies and brands and can be active at any time of day (or night), any day of the week and from anywhere in the world. This doesn’t fit the rigid, traditional model of 9-6 weekday office hours, and so it’s become clear that something needs to change to give prospective tenants a service that works for them 24/7.
“The odds of connecting with an applicant if contacted within 5 minutes drop 100 times compared with contacting after 30 minutes of the initial enquiry”
We have recently partnered with a new prop-tech company, “Olivia”, who are a multi-channel messaging platform that specialise in providing letting agents with a responder service that works around the clock – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If an applicant enquires about a property through our website or any of the portals, Olivia responds within seconds either via text message (SMS), WhatsApp or Facebook Messenger.
“Consumers log in to WhatsApp on average 23 times a day”
One of the major advantages of Olivia is that the enquiry is responded to by real people, rather than simply an automated message, or “bot”. This means that the applicant can engage in conversation with a fully trained assistant, who can answer questions about specifics of the property, advise on criteria for renting the property and even book in viewings. All of this can be done out of standard office hours, meaning once our negotiators come into the office of a morning, they will already have a list of fully qualified applicants, booked in for viewings potentially that same day.
“Olivia has an average engagement rate of 73% compared with average email opening rates of 28% or average phone answering rates of 26%”
As a Landlord, you must be questioning whether your Letting Agent is doing everything they can to maximise the chance of getting the right people out to see your property. In this day and age, the traditional methods of responding to prospective tenants just aren’t effective enough, as the stats show. At Excel, we understand the world of communication is changing rapidly and we are ahead of the game to ensure we can make the most of new technologies in order to provide the very best service to our clients and customers.
To find out more about this and other ways that we are improving performance and enhancing service levels in the Lettings industry, make sure you are following us on all social platforms to get the latest news and updates.