By business type
An assistant for an estate agency, and the questions that need a negotiator
An agency serves four audiences from one website: buyers, sellers, tenants and landlords, each with a completely different question set, and most of them arrive in the evening when the office is shut. That is the case for automating the factual half, which is large. The judgement half, what a property is worth and whether an offer will be accepted, belongs to a person and moves too fast to index anyway.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- how do i book a viewing
- is this property still available
- what fees do you charge sellers
- what does your landlord management fee cover
- what do i need for referencing
- how much is the deposit and where is it held
- do you accept pets
- can i view at the weekend
- how much is my house worth
- do you take housing benefit
- is the flat accessible with a wheelchair
- has the seller accepted the offer yet
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| Seller fees and the terms attached to them | Your commission basis, whether it is sole or multiple agency, the tie in period, the notice required to withdraw, and how withdrawal or abortive fees work. Sellers compare agents on exactly these terms and rarely get a straight answer before an appraisal. |
|---|---|
| Landlord service levels, priced side by side | Tenant find, rent collection and full management, with what each one actually includes: inspections, contractor instruction, arrears chasing, renewal handling, compliance certificates. Landlords buy on the difference between the tiers, and the difference is where the questions come from. |
| Your tenant referencing process | What is checked (identity, right to rent where that applies where you operate, income multiples, employment, previous landlord, credit), when a guarantor is required, and how long it typically takes. This is the highest anxiety part of renting and it is entirely proceduralised, which makes it ideal material. |
| Deposit handling | How much you take, which protection scheme holds it where deposit protection rules apply, when the prescribed information is issued, and how deductions are decided and disputed at the end. Getting this wrong in writing is a compliance exposure as well as an argument, so index the policy you actually operate. |
| How viewings are arranged | Accompanied or not, the hours you offer including evenings and weekends, how much notice a tenanted property needs, what happens if nobody turns up, and which properties are by appointment only. |
| Accessibility and practical detail on the properties you list | Floor, lift, step free access, parking arrangements, and where the details sheet or floorplan lives. Somebody who cannot manage stairs should not have to book a viewing to find that out. |
What has to reach a person
What a specific property is worth
Valuation is a judgement about a particular property in a particular week, informed by comparables the assistant cannot see and a walk through it has not done. Sellers who receive a number anchor to it, and the appraisal that follows becomes a negotiation about why the agent went lower.
The right handling is to explain how the appraisal works, that it is free if it is, and to take the address and contact details so a valuer can arrange it.
Offers, negotiations and anything about the chain
Whether an offer has been accepted, what the vendor would take, why the chain has stalled, whether another party has bid. This is commercially and legally sensitive at once, it changes hourly, and in most jurisdictions the agent owes duties to the seller about how offers are handled and communicated.
The assistant should never confirm, imply or speculate about the status of a negotiation. It takes a name and passes it to the negotiator on the file.
Whether an applicant will pass referencing
Income, benefits, credit history, guarantor arrangements. These are assessed against criteria set by the landlord and the referencing provider, and telling somebody they will be fine before that assessment is both wrong and, if it turns on the wrong characteristic, a discrimination risk for the agency.
Repairs, disrepair and anything urgent in a tenancy
A leak, no heating, a lock that has failed, a safety issue. Landlord repairing obligations carry timescales in most jurisdictions, and an evening chat message is not a repair report. Point at the emergency contact and take the details so the property manager has them first thing.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
I cannot value a property or tell you anything about an offer or a negotiation. I can help with booking a viewing, our fees for sellers and landlords, how referencing works and how deposits are held. Leave your name, email and what you are asking about, and the right person here will come back to you.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
Deposit protection is a statutory duty in many places
Where deposit protection rules apply, a deposit must be placed in an approved scheme within a set period and prescribed information given to the tenant, with real consequences for failure including restrictions on recovering possession. What the assistant says about deposits has to match your actual practice exactly, because a tenant will quote it back.
Property particulars carry consumer protection duties
Agents in most markets are required not to mislead about a property and, in many, to disclose information that would affect a decision. An assistant that improvises a description, or confidently repeats a detail from a listing that has since changed, is publishing a particular in the agency's name.
Index the listing source you actually maintain, and have the assistant point at it rather than paraphrase it.
Lettings decisions sit close to discrimination law
Rules in many jurisdictions restrict blanket refusals based on protected characteristics or on receipt of benefits, and the wording of a refusal matters as much as the policy behind it. Anything the assistant says about who may apply should be reviewed by somebody who knows your local position, and eligibility questions are safer routed to a person.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- What a specific property is worth, or what it would let for.
- Whether an offer has been made, accepted or rejected.
- Whether an applicant will pass referencing or be accepted.
- Whether a chain will complete, or by when.
- Anything about a named vendor, buyer, tenant or landlord.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a estate agency rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- Handling viewing requests outside branch hoursMost viewing enquiries land when the branch is shut. What the assistant can settle about access, notice and hours before a negotiator sees it.
- Seller fees and landlord fees, kept in separate lanesSellers ask about commission and tie ins, landlords ask what the management fee covers. Same words, different audiences, different answers.
- Deposit questions where the wrong answer is a compliance problemTwo different payments, two different rules and one word. What the assistant explains about protection, deductions and what is refundable.
- Access questions about a property, answered before the appointmentFloors, lifts, thresholds and parking. Why nobody should have to attend a viewing to discover a property does not work for them.
- What happens when somebody types their own addressThe moment an address appears, the answer belongs to a valuer. Handover here is a routing problem across four audiences and one widget.
- The fee is a percentage of a number that does not exist yetCommission is a percentage of a price nobody has set yet, so the fee only becomes a sum after a valuer has stood in the hall.
- Two customers, one procedure, and the stage after the agencyA tenant complains about a landlord's property, a seller about the agency itself. One written procedure, and a stage that sits outside it.
- The branch being open does not mean a viewing is availableBranch hours, viewing hours and the emergency line are three different timetables, and the one people want is rarely the office one.
- Where do I park is two questions and only one is about your officeA permit bay is a particular about the property, not a facility of the office. Two questions wearing the same six words.
- Take me off your list is not the same as delete my fileReferencing packs, identity copies and rent ledgers. Some of it belongs to a landlord, some to a scheme, and some cannot go yet.
- Three cancellations that share a word and nothing elseA viewing is a courtesy call, a sole agency instruction has a tie in and a notice period, and a buyer before exchange owes nothing.
- The money in question is usually not the agency's moneyMost of what gets called a refund here is money the agency never earned: a scheme's deposit, client rent, a supplier already paid.
- Two documents, and neither of them behaves like a billA rent statement is a record of deductions, and the seller's commission invoice is usually settled by a conveyancer out of the sale.
- Insurance questions from landlords, and the line before adviceA residential policy is rarely written for a let property, and rent guarantee turns on the referencing outcome rather than the landlord.
- What an overnight reply is allowed to promiseEnquiries land long after the branch has locked up. What an overnight reply can honestly promise about Monday, and what cannot wait for it.
- Registering interest, and what it does not buy youBuyers and tenants ask to be told when something comes up. Registering confers no order, no priority and no promise of a match.
- Is it still available is the hardest easy question hereA listing stays up after an offer is accepted, so visibility proves nothing. Three truthful answers, and the branch may not know yet.
- The first appointment, and what happens in the hour after itNothing is needed at the door and a great deal is needed in the hour afterwards. Buying, renting and the free appraisal compared.
Questions
- Most of our traffic is out of hours. Is that where the value is?
- It is. Viewing requests, fee questions and referencing questions arrive in the evening and at weekends, and the ones nobody answers until Tuesday go to whichever agent replied first. Answering the factual half at eight at night, and taking a name for the rest, is the whole return here.
- Can it tell somebody a property is still available?
- Only as accurately as the page it read. Availability moves faster than most listing pages do, so it is safer to have it point at the live listing and offer to arrange a viewing than to assert a status it cannot verify.
- Will it handle landlord and tenant questions differently?
- It answers from whatever material matches the question, so the way to separate them is in the material itself. Keep the landlord service pages and the tenant process pages distinct and clearly labelled, and the answers stay in the right lane.
Keep reading
- For a law firmFee structures, consultation terms and onboarding checks are answerable. Anything applied to a caller's own facts is legal advice.
- For a accounting firmDeadlines drive the volume. What an accountancy practice can automate, and why no answer may touch a caller's own numbers.
- For a insurance brokerProduct information is safe ground. A personal recommendation is regulated, and no assistant may confirm whether a loss is covered.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.