ONLINE CHAT IS THE NO.1 DIGITAL CONTACT METHOD

Online live chat has become the leading digital contact method for online customers, as a staggering 42% of customers prefer live chat compared, to just 23% for email, and 16% for forums (*Source: JD Power, 2018).

The study also shows that more than 30% of customers expect live chat on websites and for customers that visit a site using a mobile, this number rises to 62%. Website visitors that engage with a company via live chat are worth 4.5 times more than visitors that don’t use live chat** (**Report by ICMI, 2018). Another study*** shows that live chat leads to a 48% increase in revenue per chat hour and a 40% increase in conversion rate. (***Source: Forrester, 2018)

It’s clear that live chat is providing companies with staggering results and according to PropertyHeads.com, the property and social network portal, agents that don’t make the most of online chat, could be potentially losing instructions, without even realising it.

Ben Davis, CEO comments: “Online chat is the next evolution and many leading agents already have it on their websites and understand the value it brings.

“All the stats show that online chat really does improve engagement and provides excellent results.  One of the most popular ways to use live chat is for customer support, as it enables customers to get an instant response to the questions they need answering.

“It is well recognised that house hunters see properties on the major portals first, where currently there is no online chat facility.  As the majority of potential consumers aren’t visiting estate agency websites early on in the renting/buying process, agents have little opportunity for engagement.

“We developed PropertyHeads.com to give agents the opportunity to promote their brand and engage and build relationships with home buyers and tenants, before they visit the large portals. Now agents can move online chat up the enquiry funnel and help sort genuine portal enquiries quickly and efficiently.

“Our enquiries uniquely come from people with a profile and a timeline, which gives agents extraordinary insights into their property tastes and ambitions.  Online chat is just one way we help agents promote to their local communities.  We also enable agents to post content, engage with clients’ content and instant message, standard message or via a group chat.

“PropertyHeads.com is the only social network dedicated to property matters.  We empower estate agents to win new instructions and sell more homes, by enabling them to maintain control of their brand by networking with their clients directly, posting content and managing buyer and vendor enquiries. And because we’re The Property Social Network, we value agents’ content.  If agents post content on our social network, they can guarantee all of their contacts have the opportunity to engage with their post.”

PropertyHeads.com has 4,000 agents on the portal and is growing fast.  The portal is free for agents and will always be free for unlimited listings from traditional, online and hybrid agencies.  However, PropertyHeads.com will not permit For Sale By Owner private listings, partly for quality control reasons.

For more information, please visit www.propertyheads.com.