Playbook, estate agency
What happens when somebody types their own address
An agency runs four conversations through one website, and the handover has to work out which desk it is holding before it takes anything. A seller wanting to know what their house is worth needs a valuer and an appointment. A tenant with no heating needs the property manager tonight. A buyer asking whether an offer went through needs the negotiator on that file, who cannot discuss it anyway. The common trigger is a specific property entering the conversation, and from that point nothing general is useful.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for asking for a person holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A seller who is given any number anchors to it, so the appraisal that follows becomes a negotiation about why the agent came in lower rather than a conversation about the road.
- The address is both the trigger and the thing that has to be captured, which is unusual, since in most trades the detail that forces a handover is the detail the assistant should not take.
- Anything about an offer or a chain is commercially sensitive and moves hourly, and in most jurisdictions the agent owes duties to the seller about how offers are handled and communicated.
- One of the four routes has a repairing obligation behind it, so a tenancy issue arriving in the evening cannot be treated as an enquiry to be read in the morning.
How it arrives
- how much is my house worth
- can someone come out and value my property
- has the seller accepted the offer yet
- what would my flat rent for
- i have no heating and it is the weekend
- who is dealing with our sale
What has to be indexed for this to work
| How your appraisal works, and whether it is free | What happens at a market appraisal, how long it takes, who attends, what they bring, and what the seller receives afterwards. This is what the assistant offers instead of a number, so it has to be worth having. |
|---|---|
| Which desk handles what, and how to reach each | Sales, lettings, property management and accounts, with the enquiries each takes. The handover is only as good as the routing, and an agency that publishes this internally rarely publishes it where the assistant can read it. |
| Your emergency and out of hours arrangements for tenancies | The number for a leak, a heating failure or a security issue, when it is staffed, and what a tenant should do meanwhile. This belongs inside the handover wording, because that route cannot wait for an inbox. |
| What you can and cannot say about offers | Your own policy on communicating offers, drawn from the duties you owe sellers where you operate. The assistant needs a clear published boundary here rather than an instinct, because buyers ask persistently. |
The reply
Valuing a property is not something I can do from here, and a figure from me is one a valuer would then have to talk you out of. What we can do is send somebody out to look at it, which is free, takes about half an hour, and they will bring recent comparable sales with them. Give me the address along with your name and email and I will pass it over today so somebody can call and arrange a time.
It refuses the number and immediately explains the harm in giving one, which is more convincing to a seller than a policy statement. Describing what the valuer brings makes the appointment sound like the useful thing rather than the sales call it is feared to be. Asking for the address is the one detail the desk needs, and it is safe to take because it is what the request was about.
Where it stops
The trigger. A specific property enters the conversation, whether as an address, a valuation request, an offer, a tenancy or a repair.
I cannot value a property or say anything about an offer, so this one goes to a person. Send me the address with your name and email, and say whether it is a sale, a letting or a tenancy problem, and it will be on the right desk today.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never give a value, a guide price or a likely rent for a property.
- Never confirm whether an offer has been made, accepted or rejected.
- Never say anything about a named vendor, buyer, tenant or landlord.
- Never treat an urgent tenancy repair as an enquiry that can wait for the next working day.
Questions
- Why does the handover ask which desk before taking details?
- Because four audiences share one widget and the routing is the whole value. A valuation request that lands in the lettings inbox is an instruction lost to another agent, and asking one short question is cheaper than that.
- Sellers just want a ballpark. Is refusing worth it?
- It is, because a ballpark from a widget becomes the number the seller expects, and the appraisal then starts from a disagreement. Offering the appraisal with comparables is a better answer to what they actually want, which is a sense that the agent knows the road.
- What about a tenant with an emergency in the evening?
- Put the emergency number inside the handover wording rather than in a document, so it appears in the first reply. Repairing obligations carry timescales in most jurisdictions, and an evening chat message is not a repair report.
Keep reading
- Everything for a estate agencyViewings, fees, referencing and deposit rules are answerable at any hour. Valuing a property or discussing an offer is not.
- Handling asking for a person in generalThe design question at the centre of a support assistant. Offer early, offer once, collect what a reply needs, promise a time you can keep.
- 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.
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.