How to Generate Qualified Home Buyer Leads with Live Chat

In a world where digital channels are always expanding, it’s hard to know which one is the right one to go for, and when to go with it.  However, there is always one key consideration you should keep in mind, “Which channel is best for my customers?”

The reality is, whether reaching out to you via chatbot for customer service or walking into a store, your customers now expect a fully integrated, and consistent experience.

That’s why live chat is a powerful marketing tool for creating a personalised customer experience and  generating high intent leads for your business. It’s a digital channel that we believe you should include in your property lead generation strategy right now.

Here are our top 3 reasons why you should use live chat:

1. Increase your sales appointments

When it takes 6-8 touch points to generate a viable sales lead, implementing live chat on your website is an additional opportunity for customers to engage with you online. Live chat can be used at varying stages of their property buying journey. By speaking with real home buyers in real time, you can lock in appointments with qualified leads who are ready to buy now.

2. Profile home buyers to personalise their experience

Personalise the sales experience by collecting profiling data early on. Use live chat to find out preference and product based information about your customers.

Are you chatting to a downsizer or a first home buyer? Are they ready to buy soon or are they still in the research phase? Are they looking for 2 bedrooms or 4? Profile your customers then integrate this information directly into your CRM to deliver a consistent personalised experience throughout their buying journey.

3. Use live chat as a lead nurturing tool

Today’s home buyers want flexible engagement. Prospective customers want to communicate with you in the way that best suits their needs. Live chat offers an additional option for real customer engagement outside of phone, SMS or email.

Be available for customers to engage with you on their terms. Not everyone is confident enough to pick up the phone initially. You can nurture those people, educate them about the home-buying process, build trust in your brand and get them ready to speak to sales over the phone, or in person.

That all sounds awesome right?

But remember, your customers expect the same experience as they would do walking into a display suite – so here are a few quick tips from Adam and his team on how to succeed using live chat:

1. Quick response time
   When it comes to live chat, customers are expecting a response time in a minute or less. Avoid missed sales opportunities by giving home buyers the option to connect with agents as quickly as possible. This will also build brand trust and establish credibility. Social Garden passes through appointment requests in real time with warm transfers as speed to response is critical to maximise conversions.
2. Be authentic, you’re a person not a bot
   Buying a home is a big life decision and homebuyers want to put their faith in a real person. Know the facts and be informative when answering your customers’ questions. Most importantly, be personal and adapt your conversation to suit their needs; ask yourself, are you chatting to a first home buyer or an investor? and tweak your tone accordingly. After all, people buy from people and you are a person, not a bot 😉
3. Optimise your live chat process
   Get your go live plan in place, but remember like all things digital this should not be a set and forget model. Optimise your live chat process based on real time conversations; if there is a difficult conversation, make a log of this so you know for next time.
4. Benchmark your sales metrics
   Record key metrics such as conversation to appointment rate to benchmark your success as you progress with live chat as a viable sales channel. Look out for key intent markers that suggest your customer is ready for the next step such as an interest in specific home designs, or pricing requests. Then, get them to a sales agent ASAP.

Get started with live chat

In summary, live chat is an awesome opportunity to connect with more buyers in the market. It is a natural extension of your current enquiry process and you could be missing out on opportunities with genuine home buyers without this channel in your sales and marketing strategy.

Want to know more about how to generate sales qualified leads with live chat? See our full case study on how we dramatically increased appointment conversion for a national home builder here. Contact us to learn more about how to get started with live chat.