As tools go, LionDesk’s Lead Assist might be the most aptly named one on the market, because it does exactly what it says it does: assists you with your leads. But, Lead Assist does this in a unique and innovative way that almost nobody else on the market is using right now: artificial intelligence.
If you’re skeptical, don’t worry, so were we until we got a chance to actually test out the system, have some interactions with “Gabby” (your new AI assistant), and see some results.
In this article, we’re going to walk you through what Lead Assist is, what it does, and show you firsthand what a conversation with “Gabby” looks like. Will you be a believer by the end of this article? Come along and find out.
What Is Lead Assist?
Lead Assist is an exclusive feature built into the LionDesk CRM platform. It’s designed to start conversations, qualify leads, and maintain relationships with prospective clients in the early stages of your relationship with them.
Lead Assist does this by starting conversations with your leads via text, then dynamically continuing the conversation based on your lead’s responses, gathering qualifying information, and moving them down the lead funnel. We know this sounds too good to be true, but the system is pretty amazing, the responses feel authentic and human, and many who talked to “Gabby” (you can choose any name you like for your AI Assistant) had no idea they weren’t speaking to a real person.
Who Can Use Lead Assist?
In order to access Lead Assist, you have to be a LionDesk customer, which, if you’re not, you should consider. We recently named LionDesk the #1 real estate customer relationship manager (CRM) in our guide of The Best Real Estate CRMs. They’re trusted by more than 165,000 real estate agents across the country, and they’re consistently ranked among the top providers by other reviewers across the industry.
We’ve done a deep dive into LionDesk, including a full video walk-through of the platform you can check out, or you can just head over to their website and try them for yourself. LionDesk offers a 30-day, full-featured free trial; you don’t even need a credit card, so there’s really nothing to lose.
How Much Does Lead Assist Cost?
To access Lead Assist, you need to be a paying LionDesk customer; plans start as low as $21 per month. In order to use Lead Assist, you purchase credits from LionDesk. Each conversation initiated by “Gabby” costs one credit. Credits range in price from $3.00 each, down to $2.30, depending on how many you’re purchasing.
So, for example, an agent who is running a lead generation campaign on Facebook that is collecting 30 leads a month will pay approximately $69 in credits plus their monthly LionDesk CRM fee.
How Does Lead Assist Work?
OK, so now that we know what Lead Assist is and how much it costs, let’s dig into how it actually works. The process is pretty simple, but understanding each of the moving parts makes it easier to see why this is such an effective way to communicate with your leads.
In a nutshell, here’s how the LionDesk process works:
- “Gabby” gets assigned a lead profile (either manually by you in the LionDesk CRM or automatically through something like a lead generation campaign).
- “Gabby” opens the conversation with wide, general questions to get your lead talking, and then continues those conversations, qualifying your lead along the way.
- While qualifying, “Gabby” is populating the lead profile on LionDesk for you with all the info you’ll need to turn this lead into a client.
- When it’s time, you’ll jump in and take over communication with the lead, and it’s up to you to close them as a client.
Pretty simple, right? Even though the process of using Lead Assist is very straightforward, some folks still have questions. Here are the most frequently asked questions about how Lead Assist functions.
What Triggers Lead Assist?
“Gabby” needs to be prompted to start reaching out to your leads and beginning the qualification process. She can get this notification manually when a real estate agent who’s using LionDesk goes into a lead’s profile and assigns Lead Assist to a particular prospect, or this can happen automatically when a lead is added to your CRM from a lead source you’ve assigned Lead Assist to follow up with.
For instance, say you’re running a Facebook ad campaign (which can also be created inside LionDesk), marketing a list of homes available for sale in a particular market. If a lead completes that lead form and their lead information is automatically transferred into LionDesk, you can tell Lead Assist to automatically begin the follow up process.
How Often Does “Gabby” Follow Up With My Leads?
The answer to this depends on what sort of interaction your leads are having with Lead Assist, just like it would depend if you were the one directly interacting with your leads.
Generally speaking, “Gabby” will follow up with your leads a couple times a week in the beginning. That will space out to once every two weeks for a while, and if she still isn’t hearing anything back from your leads, drops down to a monthly outreach.
“Gabby” will keep trying to engage your leads for up to a year after they’ve been assigned to her; after a year, she calls it quits.
What Happens When People Interact With “Gabby”?
Once a lead engages with Lead Assist, the qualifying conversations begin. “Gabby’s” natural language processing and constantly evolving vocabulary makes interactions feel very natural. She’s also programmed to time her responses so that they aren’t so fast that they feel inauthentic. It’s pretty obvious that you’re speaking to a bot when they respond faster than someone could physically type out a response.
After the conversation begins, “Gabby” starts asking qualifying questions to find out where your lead is at in the process of buying or selling a home. Being armed with this information prior to actually speaking to your prospects is going to help speed along your interactions with them and give your leads the impression that you’re running a well-oiled machine.
You can sit back and watch these conversations happen in real time, or you can wait and catch up at the end of the day to see where all the conversations have left off and determine which leads it’s time to take over and which you’re content letting “Gabby” continue to interact with.
How Does the Lead Passback Occur?
Once “Gabby” has done her job and your leads are well and truly qualified, you’re sent a notification in the LionDesk CRM that there is a qualified lead ready for you. You can wait for these messages, or you can jump in and start texting the lead yourself from right inside the LionDesk CRM.
Doing so will also automatically let “Gabby” know that you’ve got it from there. Since your LionDesk CRM text number isn’t the same as your cell phone number, if you do decide to text (or call, or otherwise communicate with) your lead outside of the framework of LionDesk, you’ve got to go into your lead’s profile and turn off lead assist. Otherwise, “Gabby” will keep reaching out even when you’ve got the lead in your camp.
Overall, the lead passback process is pretty seamless; it’s actually in these passback moments that “Gabby” feels the most real. Even leads who may have an idea that they’re talking to an artificial intelligence (AI) bot will thank “Gabby” after she’s officially handed them over to you.
How Does Lead Assist Fit in With Other LionDesk Tools?
Since Lead Assist is a native function on the LionDesk CRM, it fits in nicely with the other communication and lead generation tools on the platform. My favorite way to use “Gabby” with the rest of LionDesk is to make the activation of Lead Assist a function of specific lead generation campaigns. Here’s an example:
Say you’ve got a real estate farming postcard you’re sending to neighborhoods with a direction to visit a specific website for a home valuation. You can trigger Lead Assist to activate whenever someone fills out a lead form on that website, starting her on the path to putting a qualified, fully formed lead profile in your CRM and indicating when it’s time to jump in and take over.
Often, the challenge with farming campaigns isn’t getting the media out, it is effectively following up with the responses. “Gabby” and Lead Assist make that easy.
The Close Puts “Gabby” to the Test
As a part of putting Lead Assist through its paces, we tried it out with one of our unsuspecting (but very tech-savvy) team members, Lily Stern. The rules of this test were simple: Lily would get a message from an assistant named “Gabby.” She wouldn’t know whether or not she was talking to Lead Assist or to myself, acting as an assistant.
Here’s what Lily had to say about her experience with “Gabby”:
Team member: Lily Stern
Position: Digital marketing specialist
Spoke with: Lead Assist
Here are the screenshots of Lily’s conversation with “Gabby”:
Bringing It All Together: Is “Gabby” Worth It?
In short, yes. For what you pay for “Gabby,” Lead Assist is well worth the investment if it means you get qualified leads, many of whom believe you have a real-life assistant working for you. Since “Gabby” is constantly learning new things, her vocabulary is always improving, and her ability to converse directly with your prospects gets better all the time. You aren’t getting a static tool with Lead Assist—you’re getting a tool that gets better the more you use it.
We think Lead Assist is a great investment for real estate professionals on its own, but it is also part of one of the leading real estate CRMs on the market, LionDesk. If you’re interested in learning more about LionDesk, check out our review and video walk-through here.
If you’re ready to try LionDesk and Lead Assist out for yourself, they’re offering a 30-day free trial that doesn’t even require a credit card, so you’ve really got nothing to lose.
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