Problem:
You’re out of the office all day and you don’t have an assistant or your assistant is focused on transaction management, not primary contact with consumers. Another problem is that no one can be awake 24/7 and night time home seekers are often under served.
The other problem is that automation has been portrayed negatively recently (yeah, I may be guilty of criticizing too) mainly because of Twitter auto responders (“thanks for following, ask me about X product, blah blah blah”). If you’re going to use some form of automation because your need to be present is so high (you’re never at a computer, you want more interaction on your website, etc), at least check out the following solution… it could be the answer- it appears to be highly customizable, trackable, and most importantly, there is a free trial option so you don’t have to pony up without knowing what you’re getting into.
Solution:
A virtual chat agent that provides actual metrics that show the success of chat sessions during your absence.
When talking to the folks at the Antenna Group who represent MoxieChat, I told them that your main question would be why anyone should pay for a chat client when there are free options and the answer was quite convincing:
First and foremost, MoxieChat is one of the only virtual chat technologies to combine artificial intelligence methodologies with natural language parsing. In short, this means that Realtors can create a multiple online agents who embody their own unique personality, style, etc. and can engage potential customers with intelligent conversation, answering any questions they might have or completing an lead-generating form.
MoxieChat, as an automated virtual chat agent, is available 24/7 to anyone who visits the website, allowing the Realtor to develop hot leads while away from the office. To track the success of the agent(s), MoxieChat provides detailed analytics on the performance of the script, chat history and chat conversions. Last but not least, MoxieChat is extremely simple to set up: merely go through a 15 minute wizard, add a few lines of code to ones site and MoxieChat is up and running!
The details:
It looks like prices start at $29.95 per month and they have a chart outlining what you get for your money. There are different skins available and it looks to be pretty easy to set up. Is anyone already using MoxieChat that would like to share in the comments their experience?
AgentGenius.com is not in any way affiliated with MoxieChat
Atlanta Real Estate
September 2, 2009 at 11:13 pm
Yeeeaaaahhh, about that…
I played with the demos a little bit. To me, it screams of desperation that one has to resort to a gimmick like that to keep people from surfing away.
Plus, it’s very irritating, like pop ups, back before every browser learned how to squash those irritants.
I would rather invest the time and money in giving visitors a real reason to stay longer (or give me their contact info the real purpose).
What do you think of it Lani?
Rob
Elad Kehat
September 3, 2009 at 3:04 am
Communicating directly with your website visitors is a great idea, but I’d think twice before letting automated software do this. They’re just not good enough yet, and some (if not all) your visitors will figure out that they’re actually talking to a bot. What do you think their reaction would be then? – it’s not even a question of whether the bot was helpful – it’s that feeling that you’ve been had and held a discussion with a computer when you were thinking you’re chatting with a human being.
Rob in the comment above is right – you should play with the demos before even considering this.
BTW, if you really like the idea of chatting with your website visitors, and you’d rather let an actual person do that, take a look at https://www.olark.com/ (I’m not affiliated with them in any way other than having used their service in the past).
Sal Antsipenka
September 3, 2009 at 4:50 am
I created a video map of Naples real estate, area and communities where my initial clients can hang around and watch how the area they are interested in looks like. However it doesn’t save me from late night phone calls and early morning e-mails. They just find my phone and e-mail on the website and bypass any other means of communication, i.e. pop up screens, lead acquisition buttons, fill out forms or voice messages.
Tim Ryan
September 3, 2009 at 4:54 am
This is something new to me. I will definitely check it out. However how would it work with international clients who speak a little of English just barely enough to get basic info from them?
Atlanta Real Estate
September 3, 2009 at 7:54 am
Hey Sal,
The Naples Pier video was a great idea! I went to your site and watched it and a lot of ideas started going through my head about how I could do this type of thing on my site.
Nice work!
Rob