CEBU, Philippines - Global property portal Lamudi Philippines launched a new service to provide real estate brokers easier access to connect with prospective buyers through SMS.
Lamudi’s new free service will allow real estate brokers to receive text notifications when a prospective buyer inquires about their property, said Lamudi Philippines managing director Jacqueline van den Ende.
Ende said the introduction of the new service is part of the online company's effort to make its operation more efficient for licensed real estate professionals.
This service allows brokers to receive SMS notifications one hour after property-hunters have inquired about their properties through the Lamudi website. The first hour after a potential buyer inquires is a very important window in sales.
“In order for real estate brokers to successfully close this sale, they must reply to a customer inquiry before another seller does," she said.
A study conducted by U.S.-based CRM platform salesforce, it indicated that online customers who receive a reply one hour after an inquiry are 60 times more likely to convert than those contacted after 24 hours.
Called the first-mover advantage, a seller who replies to an inquiry the fastest can earn a potential buyer’s loyalty. This is really important in e-commerce, said van den Ende, as online customers are generally not loyal.
“Research shows that even though a customer is going price-shopping online, a sense of loyalty drives them back to the vendor who responded to them first," she said.
In addition,van den Ende said that online sellers who can provide responsive customer service are able to create strong social and psychological bonds with prospective customers, and this tends to override offers from other competing service providers.
Lamudi's SMS service works as follows: Licensed real estate brokers must register their mobile number by logging into their account.
After Lamudi has validated their mobile number, brokers will start to receive text messages once prospective buyers inquire about their property. This SMS service is free of charge for all registered Lamudi brokers.
Early this year, Lamudi reached out to the offline market to promote its growing 100 thousand property listings in both online and offline market.
The "Dial4Home" was introduced, which is a service where home-buyers can call the company's hotline and talk directly to a customer care representative.
While the internet has proven to be a powerful and effective tool in the house-hunting process, there is still a largely untapped group of homebuyers who prefer to look for property--the "old-fashion" way, said van den Ende. — Ehda M. Dagooc (FREEMAN)