As a real estate agent, you are always on the go. If you aren’t meeting with a client or customer, you’re moving from house to house, to the office and back. The high volume of the real estate industry means that as a realtor, you need to be constantly reachable. No matter where you are, or what time it is, your clients are going to want to get a response from you. Regardless of if you’re in the office, at a showing, at home, or on the road, with VoIP you’ll be able to have full access to your business phone number.
As a real estate company, you need a reliable mobile VoIP system to manage your communications in order to ensure that your whole team stays connected while on the move. Your phone system is a huge contributor of how many sales you make and how happy your clients are. If your system is old or lacking the features that you need, you won’t be as successful. A report from the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) found that buyers looked for agents who were responsive, and roughly half of all buyers found it important that their agent is up-to-speed on modern technology (NAR). Another report found that “responsiveness was ranked as very important by 92 percent of home buyers and sellers” and “communication skills were ranked very important by 83 percent of consumers,” (NAR).
Mobility as a Real Estate Agent
A study found that nearly a third of real estate agents spent more time working outside the office than inside the office. Roughly half of them stayed outside the office for at least an hour a day. This same study found that 60% of real estate agents prospect for leads every day. Nearly a third of them said they spent several hours a day finding new leads.
It’s obvious that realtors are moving into a more remote direction for their workdays – even more so than other careers. Knowing this, and knowing that visiting listing and gaining prospects holds a high importance throughout their workday, it’s a necessity that realtors have the ability to use their business phone system on the go.
Having phone system mobility is essential. Being able to place and receive calls utilizing your business phone number is one of the biggest perks. You’ll be able to continue business tasks from anywhere, without having to give out your personal number. You can access your business contacts, and even see the availability of your colleagues. This is especially helpful for in real estate, because a lot of times caller want to directly reach an agent quickly, instead of going through a receptionist or auto attendant. Being able to access your business phone number directly from your cell phone is a huge advantage.
Not only can you easily stay connected to clients outside of the office, but you can also:
- Manage and listen to your work voicemail messages
- Change your status & greeting
- Access to work contacts & groups.
- See colleague availability
Cost of a VoIP System
The saving that you gain when you switch over to a VoIP system include more than just monetary benefits. Though, that is a big one! VoIP phone systems are known for being budget-friendly and high-quality – two things realtors strive for.
With traditional hardware, up-font costs can be steep, and that’s usually just the beginning of surprise bills and charges. When considering total cost of ownership for a traditional PBX system, don’t forget recurring fees for maintenance, upgrades, and changes. Time spent learning the system, as well as any downtime that becomes necessary for fixes and changes, all add to the overall cost of your phone system. With CallHarbor, your flat rate cost covers all of that and more.
A VoIP business phone system offers many cost advantages over older PBX hardware. Pricing is simple and affordable, and the low monthly fees are per person so your expenses are predictable and easy to manage. Maintenance is handled for you, and phone systems can be administered from mobile devices, reducing the need for expensive specialized technical support and training over time.
The savings from switching to a modern VoIP system from a traditional phone system can be significant – sometimes as much as 45% or more depending on the situation.
Customer Experience
You can customize music or marketing on hold messages by queue and by user, which means you can keep an updated, accurately placed music or marketing message onto your line. You can customize your message to the time of year, or sharing a specific marketing message. By having something fresh and updated if you need to put a client on hold, they’ll enjoy it much more than the scratchy, outdated, horrible quality music on hold that many people get stuck with.
Another thing that customers and clients consider important is the quality of their calls. Making sure you have a good connection and clear quality when talking to clients is crucial. It can definitely make or break you professional image, and for some clients, could even be a reason they decide to go with a different realtor. Outdated phone systems tend to have poor quality, and risk of dropped calls. This is very frustrating for both clients and realtors alike.
Scalability of Real Estate
A huge plus to VoIP systems is that they have the ability to grow and scale as you do. Even if you add another office, we can keep you connected and grow with you. You can easily stay in charge of multiple locations, call/transfer/message between locations, and stay organized. Callers and client from all locations will feel the seamless communication. You can easily customize auto attendants for separate locations, and even add different toll-free or local numbers.
Since traditional phone systems are often segmented, the only way to connect with another office or location is to hang up and dial their number directly. This can get frustrating and unreliable. VoIP can fix this issue for real estate agents by making it extremely easy to connect and consolidating multiple growing locations into one system. All of the team members within the company will be on the same system, and if you add another office or location, you can add them onto the system as well. It’s so easy and saves both clients and employees lots of frustration.
Even with this scalability, you can keep the management of phone systems separate if that’s what you prefer. You can assign site managers to different locations. They can take control of their own auto attendants, holiday/weekend hours, call rules, etc. You can keep the convenient connectivity while also staying unique from each other.
With CallHarbor, you’ll be able to focus less on managing and updating your phone system, and more on winning clients and closing deals.