Can-Chatbots-Replace-Humans

Can Chatbots Replace Human Agents?

January 10, 2022

Imaginations run wild as soon as you mention the word “chatbot.” Recent movies have contributed to the idea that bots can be dangerous and jeopardize human jobs. While that may be the case in the film, in reality, chatbots should not replace humans. Chatbots are great for fulfilling simple intents and menial tasks. However, when it comes to higher-level problems, that’s where humans excel.

Instead of looking at chatbots and humans as either/or propositions, it’s crucial to think about them as a creative way to solve problems. Chatbots can supercharge the abilities of human agents by focusing on those repetitive tasks so that humans have time to focus on solving more complex issues that require emotional and intelligent engagement. In fact, a study conducted by Informs PubsOnLine shares that when chatbots are upfront about the fact that they are bots, prospects are 79.7%. more likely to buy. So why not let chatbots jump in and do some of the heavy lifting?

Some ways chatbots can help support leasing teams include: 

24/7 Availability

Use a chatbot on your website to assist visitors 24 hours a day. The chatbot can help prospective renters find the information they are looking for, like finding a home, and subsequently hand them off to the appropriate person. The chat transcript is shared with the human agents, eliminating repetition and speeding up the process.

Boost Engagement

Chatbots can be used to boost engagement with existing clients. A chatbot can be perfect for managing maintenance or other simple requests without the necessity for phone calls. This can speed up the time it takes to service a request and, in turn, improve customer satisfaction.

Nurture Leads 

Frequently properties become overwhelmed with the number of leads entering their inbox. That’s where chatbots come in. Some chatbots (including BetterBot) offer the ability to follow up with and nurture leads in the beginning stages while handing off only the most qualified leads. This allows for better closing ratios, as these leads are most likely to convert. 

In conclusion, chatbots won’t be completely replacing humans any time soon. They are meant to help them with simple tasks so that humans can focus their attention on more complex tasks. If you’re considering chatbot solutions, check out our article on 6 things to consider when looking for a chatbot solution. 

January 10, 2022

Put Down the Wide Brush – Why You Should Tailor Your Chatbot to Your Unique Property Type

December 6, 2021

Under the multifamily umbrella, there are various property types – and no two properties are the same. And while innovations in proptech have made it much easier for property management teams to do everything from schedule tours to convert leads into new renters, no technology is a one-size-fits-all solution. Especially in the case of a multifamily chatbot, we’ve found that the more you can personalize and tailor your bot to your unique property type, the more effective it will be in the long term.

In this quick resource, we’ll outline both the benefits of tailoring your multifamily bot and how to go about it with specific examples.

Why tailoring your multifamily chatbot is important

More qualified leads

A great chatbot can help you insert yourself in conversations when and where it matters most. Still, a generic property chatbot can only help you get so far. Tailoring your chatbot to fit your property’s unique type and renter requirements can help you secure even more qualified leads and tours.

Meet your prospective renters where they are

Depending on your property type, prospective renters may be on the hunt for specific amenities and features. For example, students looking for housing may be interested in knowing how many beds an available room has. Customizing your bot to feature this and other relevant information can make it much easier to meet prospective leads’ needs directly without going back and forth with a property management team.

Give your team valuable time back

When your chatbot can more effectively meet people’s needs and provide relevant information, it can save your property management team valuable time. Instead of fielding endless email and phone queries, any information a person needs can be quickly obtained through your custom chatbot.

How to tailor your bot to common property types

Student

The apartment rental process can be unique for students, which is why it’s a great idea to craft a chatbot solution that can meet their needs. A few ways to tailor your bot for the student housing experience include:

Allowing students to search by unit availability: With many looking for apartments at the beginning and end of semesters, it can be helpful to search by availability at the touch of a button.

Search by the number of beds: Many students will opt to live with roommates to minimize the amount spent on rent. Your chatbot should be searchable by number of beds, not only to help your prospects find the right space but to help your property management team stay organized.

Student scheduling: The school year can look different based on the type of school and location. Our student bot offers a custom scheduling tool to schedule by semester, trimester, or quarter calendar.

Access to student resources: Providing interactive student resources is a great way to help your renters stay up-to-date with what’s going on at their building and school.

Conventional

Looking to spruce up your apartment chatbot? Here are a few of our recommendations:

Add multilingual support: Don’t leave great leads hanging just because English isn’t their first language. BetterBot offers multilingual support so you can easily communicate with all your prospects.

Offer virtual tours/videos: Although we’re a far cry from the beginning of the pandemic, many prospective renters may feel more comfortable taking a virtual tour of your property. With BetterBot, you can easily embed your virtual tours from Matterport, LCP360, Zillow, Vimeo, Helix, Realync, YouTube, and more.

Embed your photo galleries: Instead of sending users away from your chatbot to check out your fantastic pool and tennis court, you can quickly embed all the galleries you want directly into your chatbot.

Affordable

Especially in affordable/section 8 housing, it can be challenging for property management teams to keep up with the volume of leads and daily requests for information. A personalized chatbot can help make your life much easier by offering the following:

Waitlist management: With a user-friendly dashboard, our Affordable Bot makes it simple to view your waitlist at a glance. And once a renter moves out, you can easily choose the next – no physical list needed.

Affordable-specific dialogue: For example, you can pre-qualify leads by asking for yearly income and the number of residents looking to move in. This can help prospective renters know quickly and easily whether or not they qualify to move into your affordable spaces before even speaking with your team.

Affordable-specific reporting: Even at an affordable property, it’s still crucial that your team can sell your property experience. Our affordable-specific dashboard allows your team to quickly assess top-of-funnel leasing performance, helping you determine what’s working – and what isn’t.

Lease-Up

A Lease-Up specific bot can be beneficial for communities that may be so new that they don’t have a website up and running yet.

Offer community-specific information: Your bot will be the first (and likely only) place people go to learn about your upcoming community. Make sure to customize it with plenty of relevant information, including info on parking, amenities, and whether or not your facilities will be pet-friendly.

Set up tour appointments: Just because you don’t have a site yet doesn’t mean you can’t start booking tour appointments. Set up and manage tour appointments directly from your bot from the get-go.

In almost every industry today, personalization and customization reign supreme. And it’s not just about better serving your leads and renters – it’s also about helping make your teams’ life easier too. With the right chatbot solution at their fingertips, property management teams can feel empowered to spend less time on repetitive, low-value workflows. For more chatbot guides and insights into multifamily industry trends, check out the BetterBot Blog.

December 6, 2021

Best Apartment Software For Leasing

July 27, 2021

As the years go on, it seems that properties become busier and busier. Leasing teams have more responsibilities than ever before, and they are expected to lease at high rates. Automation tools can make life easier for on-site teams in several ways. Bringing on new programs can be stressful, but these tools are designed to take the burden off the property, practically filter through traffic, and help analyze what’s working. Here are four of the best automation tools for leasing: 

  • Chatbots
  • Virtual Concierge
  • Lead Automation
  • Marketing Analytics

Chatbots

A chatbot is a tool you can add to your community website to assist prospective renters in real-time. They can answer any questions prospects have about living in your community. Chatbots can insert you into the conversation at the prospect’s convenience so that you stay top of mind during the decision-making process. Heather Anderson, Head of Partner Sales at BetterBot, says, “Our bot helps save leasing teams time and allows prospects to find your community where they are searching rather than having them come to you”. 

Marketing Analytics

One of the things that can be helpful when it comes to marketing automation is automating your analytics. However, it’s completely understandable that you may not be able to pull this information as often as you’d desire. That’s why analytics automation is crucial for you and your teams. There are many tools you can use to automate reporting, so it comes straight to your inbox. 

G5’s new MTA Journeys report removes the blind spots in your marketing by stitching together full renter journeys.

G5 | Digital Marketing Software and Services is one great example of in-depth analytics. We had the opportunity to catch up with their Product Marketing Manager, Chris Hanson, and he shared that “Having an integrated and easy to use analytics platform is a crucial tool that every marketer needs. From monitoring baseline interactions like traffic and leads, measuring automation investments, and predicting campaign returns, it’s the glue that holds your activities together.”

Virtual Concierge

Virtual concierges are used in a number of different industries including hospitality, airlines, and restaurants. When it comes to multifamily, a virtual concierge typically offers prospects and residents assistance on their timelines. It may help give information about the community or assist with scheduling appointments. Residents may also be able to do things such as submit a service request, find a pet sitter, locate discounts, or even connect with other residents. 

Lead Automation

Taking advantage of lead automation is excellent for keeping in touch with your audience. There are many ways you can utilize lead automation but the most prominently used is an automated email outreach. Rent Dynamics CRM offers a great example of how this can be used with automated follow-ups. For example, there may be a prospect interested in a particular floorplan, but if that option is not available, their automated follow-up will send the prospect a notification once it becomes available. Harvard Business Review shares that leads are 60x more likely to convert if contacted within the first hour, which shows how important this touchpoint truly is. 

When your team has a little help and support, it becomes easier for them to focus their attention on what’s happening on-site in real-time. Chatbots, virtual concierges, autoresponders, and marketing analytics are all resources that are designed to support your teams effectively and help your communities thrive. These four tools can help ease the burden so that they can make people a priority.

July 27, 2021

Better Practices: 7 Common Misconceptions About Chatbots

June 7, 2021

In terms of helpful technologies for your business, chatbots are one of the best tools out there. Especially in the multifamily space, chatbots can help connect your team with people and drive leasing conversions like nothing else. Over the past few years, we’ve seen the real estate world absolutely become enamored with chatbots and their potential to drive better business outcomes. More property management teams than ever are leveraging the power of bot technology, and many more have questions about what a chatbot could do for their team. Today, we’re going to tackle some of the most common chatbot misconceptions to make sure we’re all on the same page about what chatbots can – and can’t do. 

Common chatbot misconceptions

1. All chatbots are powered by AI

Bots come in a variety of flavors, and not all of them use artificial intelligence. In fact, most chatbots you’re likely to come across today don’t use AI at all, but are what we like to call, guided conversation bots. Take BetterBot for example; instead of using natural language processing (NLP) to interpret and respond to inquiries, our bot guides users through a scripted path, allowing people to get immediate responses to commonly asked questions and access resources like virtual apartment tours.

While there are some bots out there that are built within an AI framework, they’re often very complex and expensive to create and maintain (and oftentimes don’t work as they’re intended).

2. Bots take away human jobs

This common chatbot misconception gets it half right. Bots definitely affect human jobs, but instead of replacing them, they make those jobs easier to do. If you’re a part of a property management team, you know how difficult it can be to respond in a timely manner to the dozens of questions and requests you get each day. Instead of having to manually answer each of them, bots can take care of the vast majority of them, leaving you more time to focus on higher-value tasks like marketing your properties. 

Instead of looking at chatbots as a threat, smart businesses see them as an opportunity. 

3. Small businesses can’t take advantage of bot tech

If your team is on the smaller side, you may think that you don’t have the time or funds to tap into bot tech. The good news is, the ability to create a great chatbot has become much more democratized in the past few years. Now more than ever, it’s easy to utilize an affordable bot solution that’s uniquely tailored to your business’s needs. 

4. Chatbots lack personality

No longer are bots dry, humorless software that lacks a personality. Nowadays, companies understand the importance of infusing their brand’s unique personality and communication style into their bot solution. That’s why you’ll see chatbots cracking jokes, offering helpful advice, and engaging with users in a friendly, conversational way. 

The great thing about bots is, is that you can customize their ‘personality’ however you’d like. Think of your bot as an extension of your customer service team. You can program them to take and answer requests in whatever way you think will best reflect your brand.

5. Bots are too technically complicated for the average team

While your team may have a lot of initial questions when it comes to implementing a chatbot solution for the first time, there are a variety of easy-to-follow resources to help you understand what your bot does and how it should be integrated into your customer experience strategy. 

Any property team can benefit from a great chatbot. At BetterBot, 97% of property management teams that use our bot keep our bot! 

6. All bots do is customer service

A great bot is like a blank slate. You can use it for a variety of functions – not just for resolving customer service requests. For example, if you want to level up your digital marketing strategy, bots can be a great conversational marketing tool. Don’t be afraid to get creative and experiment! 

7. People don’t like talking to bots

Here it is – one of the biggest chatbot misconceptions ever. Consumer’s wants and needs are changing, and not many people want to spend time calling and emailing customer service reps. People crave simplicity, and chatbots provide that. Instead of having to go back and forth with a real person, bots can get people the resources and answers they need at a fraction of the time, whenever they want. A chatbot is the 24/7, 365 customer service team member you never knew you needed.   

June 7, 2021

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