A lot of sites these days are taking advantage of live chat support functionality, where someone can instantly pull up a chat window and talk direct to a member of staff direct through the website, thus removing the need to pick up the phone or compose an email. (Also making it more likely they will make an enquiry at all.)
It’s amazing however how many estate agents sites don’t use this on their sites. Seeing as the core to all estate agents is generating interest and enquiries you’d think this would be more commonplace.
If you operate a property website and don’t have live chat available on your website (yet) we’ve included below a few reasons why you should seriously consider it.
People expect instant replies
We live in an age now where people want an instant response. We want to get our properties up online right away, so why shouldn’t we be taking enquiries and responding right away.
By using a live chat feature on an estate agent site, potential buyers and renters can ask questions about the property, and even book viewings, there and then.
Sell it to vendors and landlords
You probably have an arsenal of tools available when trying to instruct vendors and landlords properties. You list your properties on every portal under the sun, you produce high quality brochures, and so forth.
A live chat feature is another great selling tool and one you can promote to vendors and landlords as you can claim it boosts enquiries.
“It will be too much work to manage“. Don’t give me that!
I hear this all the time:
“We don’t have time to manage this”
or
“Who are we going to get to look after it?”
Do you say that to emails and phone calls? “We don’t have anyone to manage the phone“. Of course you don’t. An enquiry is an enquiry, and an enquiry over live chat should be received and treated exactly the same any other type of enquiry.
Depending on your staff setup, you might want to put one person in charge of it, or have everybody logged in when they’re at their desk. A lot of live chat programs have the notion of ‘agents’ whereby you can claim chats meaning anyone that’s available can take on the enquiry.
Easy to setup
Live chat functionality is so easy to setup, anyone can do it. Normally it involves simply adding one line of code to a site, or if you use a CMS like WordPress, you can simply install a new plugin.
Our recommendations are as follows:
Live Chat – https://www.livechatinc.com/
Live Chat comes with a free 30 day trial with prices starting at just $16 per month following that. It’s feature rich and easily customisable.
WP Live Chat Support – https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-live-chat-support/
Although it shares a similar name, it’s not related to the one above. This one comes as a plugin for WordPress and can be setup in just a few clicks. The plugin is completely free, with the option to upgrade to the PRO version for more features. We use this one on the PropertyHive website and are really pleased with it.
So there we have it, our reasons why you should get live chat support added to your site today. If you’re still unsure, why not trial it for a few weeks and see how it goes?
