Speaker 1 (00:00):
AI voice and AI texting are changing the way that we connect with the people in our database and the way that we're following up with and converting new leads and is changing real estate agents' roles in the process. Here in our First Tech 10 episode this year, real Estate Team Leaders and returning Team Os guests, Kyle Draper and Tiffany Zenni break down the tools, strategies, and tactics behind ai, phone calls, AI text messages, and AI role play to improve agent and team outcomes. You've got 22 minutes with Kyle, followed by 22 minutes with Tiffany. Enjoy our First Tech 10 episode this year on Real Estate Team os.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
No matter where your business is today or where you want to take it, you'll get there faster and more profitably with an operating system. Welcome to Team Os, your guide to starting, growing and optimizing real estate team. Here's your host, Ethan Butte.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
Kyle, I loved our first conversation on the show. That was episode 46. Welcome back to Real Estate Team os.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Thank you for having me. I loved it as well. Got a lot of great comments and feedback from it, so super happy to be back.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Awesome. That's really validating to hear There are a lot of different purposes and outcomes of hosting a show. I think the easiest one a lot of people would think about is building an audience and racking up views and downloads and stuff, but to me when I hear that and I've heard it from a number of guests on the show, like, oh, I've had so many great conversations with people, that's the greatest joy because that's what this is about. It's about serving the community and connecting the community even more. So happy to hear that. I've got just three kind of quick questions for you. The first one is, on a scale of one to 10, how interested or excited or passionate would you say you are about new technology in general?

Speaker 3 (01:41):
10. Okay.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
And has it always been that way or did that kind of develop in you?

Speaker 3 (01:47):
It's been that way for a while. I don't think it's always been that way, but just maybe 2017 or so is when I started to lean into it a little bit more and get outside of the traditional like, oh, you just door knock, and the more traditional mail to a farm type of approach. So leaning into more the internet lead side of things, you just have to have good systems in place to convert those at a high level. And that's right around when I think I started to have oppo come across my radar and start going to their conferences. And the first conference I was at with oppo I think was what really did it for me, where it was like, whoa, and I'm younger and this could be a big edge that I have to break in and compete against the person who's been door knocking my geo pharm for 30 years. That's kicking my ass right now.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
The second one is, can you think of a tech investment you've made that didn't work out?

Speaker 3 (02:42):
Oh yeah, definitely. I mean, I have shiny object syndrome for sure. There's so many things where it's like, oh, well that's really cool that I could get this insight or this data point, but unless you can really see a clear path to how that's really, really going to be implemented by the team that leads to that positive ROI, you really just have to be careful with it. And I mean the market is just, I think across the nation is kind of slowing right now. And there's probably a lot of team leaders and solo agents that are really looking at their overhead and their expenses. And there's definitely a few things that I'm excited for my six month or 12 contract to be done that I will not be renewing.

Speaker 1 (03:28):
So maybe just a little bit too eager and not necessarily working at all the way through in your mind before committing, what is this actually going to do? It sounds awesome. It is a hole that I have, but how important is that to fill?

Speaker 3 (03:39):
Exactly. And is it really going to move revenue? Because there's a lot of things that are cool, like, oh, what a great insight, or That's neat. I could take an approach this way, but you just got to be careful. And when everything is booming, it's easy to just be like, let's add, let's add, let's add. And so now's just a period I think where you're really scrutinizing what is working and what can I get rid of now, what do I have to wait for contracts to end. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (04:07):
Yeah. Okay. Last one here. What do you think your 2015 self would say about some of the tech you're using right now in 2025?

Speaker 3 (04:14):
2015? Self would be absolutely blown away. I mean, just the AI stuff especially, that wasn't even really much of a thought back then, so it would feel like you're watching a sci-fi movie type thing for sure.

Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, it's funny, I remember, I don't remember which Harry Potter movie it was, but I remember when they were flipping through. I dunno if you've seen any of those, but when they're flipping through a newspaper and there's a full motion image in a traditional newspaper style thing and you're like, man, that's really freaking cool. That's where we're at.

Speaker 3 (04:49):
We're in that moment right now for sure.

Speaker 1 (04:51):
Yeah. Yeah. And it is interesting too. I mean, AI has obviously been in development for decades, but from a mainstream perspective, the imagination that it would be in your hands the way that it is is to use your first, I think reactionary word there, mind blowing. It absolutely is. So let's jump in there. I mentioned we talked a little bit of f and y Lobo, you talked about how valuable it is across the entire customer lifecycle, those tools together in particular. But when we last connected, you were talking about some of the AI stuff. I think some people are familiar with AI voice, but give a go at that because I think it's expanding in its capabilities right now and you've been using it for a while.

Speaker 3 (05:31):
Yeah, that's the really big exciting update, I guess, is that AI voice is really thriving. It's working great. And what that is is where AI is doing outbound calls, so calling the consumer, introducing themself as, hi, this is Jesse. I'm a digital assistant, so everything is TCPA compliant. And these leads have, by the way, opted in to consent for all this. So that's really kind of the trick is just making sure that everything is totally buttoned up from a compliance consent, legality standpoint. But they've got that dialed in really nicely. And so the AI robots are basically calling the prospect and having conversations. And the goal of the conversation is to then do a live call transfer to the agents. And so it's pond based. And for my team, we're fairly geographically spread out. So if it's the Valley of Los Angeles, I've got, I don't know, 12 agents or so that are in that bucket.

Speaker 3 (06:39):
And so when the AI is doing the transfer, it will ring all those agents' phones and then it's just first to claim whoever answers it first is being handed off a live call transfer from a robot. And that is just mind blowing, mind blowing, mind blowing. My uncle, he registered as a lead on my site recently, and it was funny. I know his situation, he's not going to be purchasing a house anytime soon. And so I saw the lead come in and I was like, oh, I don't want my team to call him and kind of waste their time. So I just kind of index him accordingly. And he is messaging me later in the day and he's like, Kyle, I had just the nicest conversation with Jesse from your team today. And I'm thinking, I don't have any agent names Jesse, huh? And then I'm like, oh my God, that was our ai.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
And he's like, no, that wasn't ai. And we were arguing back and forth. I'm like, I know exactly what happened. So it's wild because you have, I think the majority of consumers, it just does kind of go over their head, the whole digital assistant thing. But the flip of that, I answered a live call transfer maybe a month ago, and it was a seller and he was, I don't know, probably in his sixties. And the first thing he says to me is he was like, that was ai. I was just talking to, right? And I was a little nervous like, oh, am I about to get exploded on? And he was just so complimentary about it. And when you think about it, it's like, yeah, that really is a good representation on our end about just how advanced that we are as a team when you have that.

Speaker 3 (08:22):
So it's really not that the goal is to trick the consumer into thinking that they're a human, even though a lot do, just because the technology has gotten so good, there's still a lot of value even if they identify that it's ai. And if you think about it, we're used to that already. If I need customer support, I know I'm going onto a website, I'm dealing with a chatbot. I know I'm not talking to a human, but that's just the steps that you go through to get connected to who you want to get connected to these days. So I just see it being a really, really, really big deal. And obviously from an overhead standpoint, this is far more cost effective than an ISA that I have to pay a base salary to, and then all these bonuses at a set appointments and closings and whatnot. So it's really, really exciting.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
First, I really appreciate this nod of, I think some of us are kind of cautious and protective. We don't want to feel like we're fooling people or we think it's inappropriate to do that, or it removes the human side of the business. But I do think it casts you as tech forward and it's of service to people. It's a normal part of the process in a lot of different circumstances. Just the exact application here feels new to people. And so there's a lot of apprehension and stuff. I just want to validate your own personal reaction to it. Your defense goes up and then it's like, oh, this is actually a really good thing. So Pond and ISA, I'm just going to just plus this up so that nobody misses it. Pond is all these leads that you've generated or paid to have generated that didn't convert, or maybe they did a deal with you a long, long time ago, they haven't engaged in a long time. It's like this big collection that no one's actively working. And typically people will hire an ISA, maybe a VA slash ISA to call into that in order to generate revenue from this investment that you've already made with your time or your money or both. There are a number of different ways people engage ponds, but I think this idea of having a machine that just doesn't stop calling is a great way to activate that pond. So I just want to plus that up. Specific question for you.

Speaker 1 (10:28):
If the live transfer doesn't go for some reason, I assume that this is probably happening on a F number or the recording can be accessed such that some of the details from that conversation can be appended to the record so that a machine or a person in the future has this as part of the view of that person?

Speaker 3 (10:48):
Absolutely. Yeah. There's tags that are added as well, and then yeah, there's a little disposition of it. I don't think it's the full transcript of the conversation, but it's a summarized disposition of what happened. And then obviously if something happened, they hung up while the live transfer was happening, that is still a hand raising lead that our agents are going to be notified like, go get 'em. This is somebody that said yes, but then for whatever reason, it didn't go through, the call got dropped or they hung up, whatever the case may be. So yeah, absolutely. There still is a lot of value there. And one caveat to what you were saying about pons is that for remarketing pons, meaning older, not new, that is an application, but there's also with this technology, a lot of times it makes sense even for brand new lead flow to just go in there.

Speaker 3 (11:45):
Because the other thing that YPO is doing so well with this is the AI texting is really, really in tandem with the AI voice. So if there's inputs that were given via text, the voice knows that and is able to reference it. And it's funny because years ago it was very much something that it was pushed the agent to just be the one like, go chase, go, go, go. And now it's almost more stay away at first agent depending on the lead type. And obviously if you're able to use this technology on it, but if you are able to use it, it's almost more efficient to just let the AI do a lot of texting, a lot of calls. And so these are newer leads that are being transferred as well, not just the older. So it's kind of just even changing at what stage do you want your agent to get involved.

Speaker 1 (12:40):
Yeah, and what are the prequalification steps to human involvement on thank you for that kind of corrections slash edition. Are there particular lead types that are, I mean, I think in general we could think, well, some lead types are more down funnel, some lead types are a lot colder and they take a lot more time to work. Obviously the colder lead sources are probably the best spots for it. But for you, are there particular types of leads that are, you're like, yeah, absolutely. We're going to let the machine do the work and as soon as they functionally raise their hand, we're going to have a human engage them.

Speaker 3 (13:10):
Yeah, our pay-per-click, we're doing that. From my perspective of it, it's like I really like brand new leads having this. And then also to your point, the kind of older nurture kind stuff that has staled or they started ghosting us internet lead just indicating that they're not quite there yet. And so it might be hard for an agent to be super motivated to continue to call somebody that hasn't responded for a year, but the AI's feelings don't get hurt and they don't get fatigued if they're just continuing to do that. And so you just have your fishing poles in the water for a lot longer at much wider scale. So yeah, right at front I think it makes a lot of sense to do that initial transfer and then as well catching the end in the middle, that's where your agents are probably already established and engaging and just building those relationships.

Speaker 1 (14:04):
Favorite other AI use cases outside the bounds, perhaps let's say of Y lopa? What are some other ways that you're really psyched about AI right now?

Speaker 3 (14:15):
Yeah, there's two, I'd say we're really pumped up about Maverick and then another company called Broker Block. So I'll start with Maverick. Maverick is a sister company of ypo. Most exciting, is that the same technology that's doing the AI voice? You can do AI role play. We have our brand new agents, they go through a 21 day challenge. I think we discussed that on the last one. And one of the components is that they have to do an AI role play once a day for three weeks. And so it's a live conversation that they're having. It's much more, say, difficult than human role play where it's just kind of softball and you get really good detailed notes at the end of it emailed to you, it scores you half the scores, did you ask for the appointment? So it's enforcing really good strategy pieces to it, and that's really helpful. We're seeing new agents get good quickly because of that. And then some of my top agents, they'll do a practice lap before they start lead generating with it. So a lot of value there and

Speaker 1 (15:17):
Then warm up like batting practice before the baseball game.

Speaker 3 (15:20):
Exactly. And you also get scores on real F calls, which is pretty cool as well. So not just on these theoretical AI ones, the actual client conversations that we're having, it can score you as well. So that's been really, really, really helpful.

Speaker 1 (15:37):
Who as the team leader can tweak what you really want to hear in these calls?

Speaker 3 (15:42):
Yeah,

Speaker 1 (15:42):
It affects the score that the agent gets.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Exactly. Yeah. They let you customize the scoring recently, which is pretty cool. There's really good follow-up boss, just database management stuff with their nudging and whatnot, meaning that as the owner or staff just policing has negative connotations, but policing our database basically, we don't have to be going in one by one to see, oh, is the agent tardy here? Did they miss something? We can just do system wide rule nudging. So if a rule is in violation, for example, a new lead should be responded to and within six hours or whatever the heck the rule is that you have set up, if it's in violation, you just push a button and it nudges every single person. And so the agent is getting a notification saying, Hey, you kind of missed this. It's not a big deal to get nudged, but it is a big deal if you don't take action on that nudge.

Speaker 3 (16:37):
And we have a smart list and follow up boss that says leads at risk of reassignment, and that basically just means that the nudge is outstanding and you haven't taken the action. So that's been pretty effective to just keep everything moving and then not have to spend all this administrative time just in the weeds and individual files. So yeah, Maverick has been awesome for us. We're big fans of that. And then with Broker Block, we're really, really pumped up about Broker. It's actually broker blocks, I should say, plural. And what that does is it syncs with follow-up Boss and AI is analyzing everything that's in Follow-Up Boss. It's also doing a lot of background research on the consumer. It's probably scrubbing their social media and just getting you all this amazing intel. And it is so helpful because once you have a connection with someone, you then have to differentiate yourself.

Speaker 3 (17:34):
You want to stand out, you want that conversation to really have that sticky factor where you're going to continue to build. They'll continue to answer your call as you continue to follow up and whatnot. And so it allows you to send these digital touch points that are well designed. There's movement to them, there's gifts. You just look so good from a marketing standpoint and it really, really cuts through in a nice way and it's going to be catered specifically to that prospect. So I had a conversation with a lady and she was going to do a 10 31 exchange and one of the next Best Actions MBAs that it queued up for me was this really nice thank you card that had my image and the AI just composed referencing the 10 31 exchange and all this stuff. And I didn't give it that input. It just knew that it was there because that was all in follow-up boss and the recorded conversation and everything.

Speaker 3 (18:33):
So really, really cool. And we actually, we had a huge win with it recently where we had a lead into our system and it was actually somebody really high up with KB Homes and my agent Ariel, she had a great conversation and at the end of it, she sent her just basically broker block presentation that kind of shows it's like a little listing presentation, but it's really punchy and more visual rather than super in depth with text. And he calls her immediately and says, this is amazing. I've never really seen marketing like this. This is so next level, can we meet with you tomorrow? And when Ariel and I walked into their sales office, I've never been in a listing appointment like this before. We're literally as I'm sitting down in the seat, the gentleman is just like, so we're going to give you unit number 32, that's your listing. This will basically a trial run. If you sell that, we'll give you more in the community. And I was like, oh my God, you IT

Speaker 1 (19:35):
Before you stepped in.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
Yeah, so in terms of a marketing assist layup for us, oh my goodness. So it's really powerful in terms of just, again, it looks so good. Nobody else has the movement that these have. It's probably hard to imagine if you're just listening to this, but it's really, really cutting edge stuff. Again, catered to the lead through the ai, so we love that one too.

Speaker 1 (20:01):
Obviously the holy grail of sales and marketing communication forever has been the right message to the right person at the right time. And I would layer in the right channel a channel that they prefer or one that stands out in the case of sending something physical to somebody that's still totally customized to them. We have the capability now to capture through a variety of means. I love this data enrichment layer that sounds like is part of broker blocks to compliment what we're getting through the F number and the F, all the communication and stuff. Putting all that stuff together to send people messages in a variety of formats that really speaks to them and where they are. And of course using AI to create more hand raises and collect even more information, it's just really starting to open up for agents to be able to spend their time in conversation with people who really want to talk to them, which is a more satisfying for the agent, and B, generally more revenue for the organization.

Speaker 3 (20:56):
Totally. Yeah, absolutely. And another thing I forgot to mention is they really are good with kind of helping the agent out. So for example, when you have an appointment booked in Follow-Up Boss, 20 minutes before that appointment, they're going to send a little text to you that is just going to give you a very brief kind of overview of their situation and then all these rapport building suggestions. And I had a call scheduled the other day and I was all frenzied and flustered and I'm driving and I'm going to have to take this call while I'm driving and it's totally unsafe to pop open Fub and scroll all the way and read every little thing. And full transparency, I could not remember who this person was or what their situation was. And this text comes through as I'm kind of stressing out about do I have to pull over on the side of the road and then I'll be late to where I'm driving to. This text comes through and it's just the easiest little punchy thing for me. And one of the things that said was, as a reminder, this prospect is actually on a staycation in Palm Springs with her dog, so you should bring that up. And I'm like, oh my God, this is so helpful. Totally. Yeah, it was great.

Speaker 1 (22:12):
That's awesome. Well, I'm really excited for the future, obviously you are too. I appreciate you coming back for TechT here on Real Estate Team os. If someone wants to learn more about you and what you're doing with Serene team, where would you send people?

Speaker 3 (22:23):
Probably my Instagram, which is at the Kyle Draper. That's probably the best way to find me. Shoot me a follow and a dm. Would love to chat. Absolutely

Speaker 1 (22:32):
Sly up right down below. Appreciate you so much Kyle. Hope you have an awesome afternoon.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
You too. Always a pleasure. Ethan,

Speaker 1 (22:39):
Learn more about Kyle Draper, why LPO Maverick and Broker Blocks. Everything is linked up right down below in the description of this episode, no matter where you're watching or listening. Next up is Tiffany Zenni who shares specific ways to learn about new tools and technology, how AI has helped her business the most, and the ways that her team is using ai, calling and texting. Tiffany, you are kind enough to be one of our very first guests here on Real Estate team os welcome back and welcome to Tech. He.

Speaker 4 (23:12):
Thank you Ethan. Thanks for having me. It's always great to chat with you. Love chatting with Ethan.

Speaker 1 (23:17):
Yeah, it doesn't happen often enough and I'm glad to do it here. So what we're going to do is I'm going to kick it off with three quick questions for you, and the first one is on a scale of one to 10, how interested or excited or passionate would you say that you are about New Tech in general?

Speaker 4 (23:32):
On a scale of one to 10, I would say I'm at a 10 right now. Love new tech, love seeing how the industry is changing and incorporating new tools to make life easier.

Speaker 1 (23:45):
Okay. You said right now

Speaker 4 (23:48):
I did.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
So were you previously a seven or a four? How long have you been a 10 would you say?

Speaker 4 (23:54):
So I'd say I've been a 10 for probably four years or so, and prior to that I would say I was probably hovering somewhere around that five, maybe four kind of level. I was excited about technology, but I wasn't comfortable with technology enough to really deploy it. So there was a little bit more of a fear there than excitement. So I would say it was probably like a four or five. Before then.

Speaker 1 (24:24):
Was it simply a problem and solution situation as you were building your business that forced you through that initial hurdle or whatever?

Speaker 4 (24:32):
Yes, definitely problem solution, but also just gaining a better understanding of how I can use tools and finding the right ones that fit with my personality, my experience level, how I think as a business owner and as soon as I opened up that door of finding a tool, finding resources that made sense to me, then it was just all over from there. Then technology became extremely exciting because I knew how to make the technology work for me and my team and how to integrate it all together.

Speaker 1 (25:08):
My assumption is that two of the best things you could do, and I'm curious if this was your experience or if you have other things to add, are talking with like-minded people and actually just trying it out to see if it fits anything else in terms of finding things that fit you, fit your goals, fit your style.

Speaker 4 (25:29):
I mean the biggest thing is narrowing down the problem that you're trying to solve too. So you can incorporate tons of different technology into your business, but if you haven't identified what your specific issues are that you need to solve and find the technology solutions that will help you solve those, then you're just going to end up with a really complicated set of shiny objects. So yes, talking to like-minded people, staying up to speed with what the opportunities are that are out there is a really, what's

Speaker 1 (26:01):
The best way to do that? There's so much noise and so many not trustworthy sources of information. Also self-motivated and some of them of course are actually not worthy of trust. Others are just very self-motivated. How should someone do that?

Speaker 4 (26:17):
So it is hard because there's a lot of noise and there are people that are paid to say positive things about different technologies. So understanding where your source of information is coming from and why the person that's telling you about a piece of technology thinks that it's great. How are you using it in your business? What's your success rate? What's your RO? What's your conversion rate? Oh, by the way, are you being compensated to refer people to this business? And I'm going to say this too, just because somebody is being compensated to refer to a business does not mean that that technology is not good, but you should just know where the information is coming from, right? It's kind of like when you're looking at reviews for a product online and it says paid sponsor or paid reviewer. Are you going to take that a little bit less serious than the one that's from the individual that wasn't compensated to write a review?

Speaker 1 (27:20):
Yeah, it reminds me of basic media literacy in general. It doesn't mean that you can't trust the review as it is, it just means you need to take it with some context and it is worth some additional follow-up questions.

Speaker 4 (27:31):
One more thing on that. So I think that the best place though to really evaluate different technologies is by going to conferences and spending some time in the exhibitor hall. That was by far the best way for me to identify technology and really dig in to what it would do for me, how it would be useful, how people are using it, being able to have a conversation with another agent in that conference that's using the tool. At the same time that you're talking to the vendor, you can ask all of those questions that you need to find the answers to. So something can be really cool technology, but did you deploy it to your team? How did you get your agents to adopt the tool? All of those questions, was it difficult to start seeing a return? You can really dig into that, but having those one-on-one conversations at an exhibitor hall was the best way for me to identify technology.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
Love that. And with that, I will see you in the hub at unlock the first week of November.

Speaker 4 (28:39):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (28:40):
Yeah. Can you think of a tech investment? I'm not asking for brand names or product names. Can you think of a tech investment you made that didn't pan out and kind of why didn't it?

Speaker 4 (28:50):
For me, it was a CRM that I used in the past, not follow-up boss, I'm just going to throw that in there. But A CRM that I used in the past that was highly recommended and honestly it was just a little bit too complicated. The reason it didn't work out and what I learned from it was that first of all, the user interface is super important and you need to be comfortable logging into the software and understanding what you're doing. You need to be comfortable with seeking resources for that tool. So having that support, whether it's through a community of other agents or through the actual support of the product is so important. But it didn't work out because I wasn't comfortable with the user interface. It was overwhelming to me and it was too complicated. So what I learned was you can get really cool things that do really cool things, but you have to be comfortable using it or it's not going to work for you.

Speaker 1 (29:56):
Really good. What is one app that you open almost every day or every day that has little to nothing to do with real estate?

Speaker 4 (30:03):
That's kind of hard and I want to give you two.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
Okay, no problem.

Speaker 4 (30:07):
One is the weather app. I open the weather app every single day and I have to look at the Tide charts two with the weather app because I live on the coast, so that's one. And the second one is I probably go a little bit too far in looking at what's happening with the stock market every single day.

Speaker 1 (30:31):
I had to remove the E-Trade app from my phone because I got honest with myself. I was like, how much am I actually trading? Which isn't super often. I'm kind of a buy and hold kind of guy, so I don't need to know this every day.

Speaker 4 (30:46):
No,

Speaker 1 (30:46):
I'm not going to touch any of this week probably.

Speaker 4 (30:49):
Right? It's kind of a huge waste of time, but I still do it every day. I look at it, I'm like, ooh, ah, let's see.

Speaker 1 (30:55):
There are worse habits. I'll tell you, there are a lot worse apps than that.

Speaker 4 (30:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (31:00):
Okay. I would love to dive in into AI in general. When did AI really make a difference in your day-to-day, week to week with you and your team, and what are some of the ways that it has made that difference?

Speaker 4 (31:12):
I think first I want to kind of clarify AI a little bit because I think we have this opinion or this thought that AI is just a, we use it to write, we use it to modify messages or tweak a response, and we've learned how to train it to talk like this. So we're going to write text messages and we're going to write emails and marketing messages, and that's what we use AI for. It's really important to realize that AI can be used for so many other things, and I think where it really started being powerful and making a big difference in my business is when I started using AI to help filter and digest data, that is where it started making a big difference because all of the tedious work of how often is this particular tag in my CRM associated with a closed transaction, that would've been a really tedious job to go through all the closed transactions and look at the tags of every single thing and being able to use AI to say, Hey, take this CSV file and I want you to pull out the combinations of the top tags associated with deals closed and dah, dah, dah.

Speaker 4 (32:28):
That kind of stuff has given me a huge opportunity to segment out my database better and prioritize leads that we should be focusing on. So that's one thing I just want to make sure that we talk about or at least understand, is that AI is not just a composition tool. It is a tool that can be used for a wide variety of computing.

Speaker 1 (32:50):
Two really important things here. One great call out on, it's not just for this, those are the baby steps and that's the entry point that chat GPT made available two and a half, three years ago. And that's an easy, obvious way to use generative ai. But the first thing we're going to start doing with it, what I would love for you to double down on or double back into is when and how did it occur to you

Speaker 5 (33:16):
To

Speaker 1 (33:17):
Take out your tags and associate them? And I just want to inspire people kind of creatively, because in my mind all the things that happened in my mind when you shared that is I know that Tiffany looked at this, she probably found something and she probably tweaked a workflow or tweaked a smart list or talked to a couple agents and now we behave differently. As a consequence of this thing that I was sparked with, I realized I could use this tool to do it. It probably would've been a passing thought five years ago because I wouldn't have spent the time to do all of that manual analysis, double back into that a little bit and break it down day to day for somebody. What does this look like in real

Speaker 4 (33:59):
Life? Sure, sure. For me, a lot of it has been trial and error. Let me try to plug this thing into chat GPT and see what happens with it. But it all starts with, I mean, and this is where all innovation starts. All innovation starts with identifying a problem, whether it's you want to automate something or you want to increase your business or whatever it is, you identify the problem. And at the time for me it was, I have a really large database. We're struggling to keep up with maintaining communication with people. So we need to figure out how to make sure that we're talking to the right people at the right time. So how do I do this? And I could do trial and error and say, okay, this is a oppo or real scout or fellow or whoever tells me this is a high intent tag. But I wanted to know, is it a high intent tag for me, for our team,

Speaker 4 (35:02):
Because we convert leads differently. Whatever team you're on, you're going to convert leads differently. One team might do really well with cash offer leads, another team might stink at those. So what is a high intent tag for you? So I wanted to kind of match that up with, alright, we've got tons and tons of data. How do I figure out these closings over the last, I don't know, four or five years, where they came from, what their behaviors were and then how can I replicate? So it started with identifying the problem. We have too many opportunities and not enough time in a day with our current agent count to address all of the opportunities. So if I can't address all of them, then I want to make sure I'm addressing the best ones. So how do I identify those? And of course, at first it was, okay, I'm going to look for patterns or trends, and then I started thinking, well, hold on. Maybe Chad GPT can look for patterns and trends. Let me see how this works. And I literally just started, it was trial and error. I was like, okay, if I upload the CSV file, can I query it with chat GPT and what's going to come out of it? And just trying different questions and seeing what the response was and then segmenting that down. And that's just kind of how it happened.

Speaker 1 (36:27):
Where has AI crept into some of the tools that you and your team are using every day that have been especially impactful?

Speaker 4 (36:35):
So a few things from lead conversion standpoint, of course now we're talking AI for texting, AI for AI voice and AI for email, AI for role play and training. So that's kind of the primary categories of where we're incorporating AI on a daily basis. Tools like YPO that have the ai texting is kind of where it first started. It's one thing to send an automated text, and honestly, sometimes I feel like automated texts can kind of shoot you in the foot, right? Because if you're not there to respond and you sent an automated, automated text, but then you're not there to respond. People when they respond to a text message that they just received, expect you to be sitting there waiting for them,

Speaker 1 (37:29):
You just sent this to me, right?

Speaker 4 (37:30):
Yeah. So it's really hard if you're not sitting there waiting for that response and it was automated, then when they respond, you can lose an opportunity or somebody gets a bad taste in their mouth. So there's a time and a place for those things, don't get me wrong, but it does become a little bit more difficult to keep up with depending on your workflow. So the benefit of AI generated text is that conversation keeps going. And so the AI is responding back and honestly, it's improved so much over the last few years. I mean, we've used AI texting with oppo for six years, I think. I don't even know, but it's improved so much. AI has empathy now and all kinds of things. It's

Speaker 1 (38:19):
More conversational. It sounds like a person would question here, what types of people are you engaging with AI texting? Is it past clients, is it new leads? Is it a mix of everything? If you were to categorize where it's the most helpful, where is that?

Speaker 4 (38:37):
Definitely. So new leads a hundred percent, but then also new activity.

Speaker 1 (38:43):
Good one.

Speaker 4 (38:44):
So we tend to move from AI to human connection once we've had a conversation and we call it a substantial conversation on our team. So if you just have a conversation with somebody that lasts a minute or two, then that person probably still needs to stay affiliated with all of our tools. If you've had a substantial conversation where you feel like you've built rapport and they're going to remember you when you call back, then at that point in time, that needs to be the human to human connection. But we are using AI for AI is responding to behavior. So those activity triggers kind of what I addressed with the tags, right? Somebody looked at a house a few times, that tag is added, the system sees it, AI reaches out and tries to reengage this person. So they're addressing some of the deficiencies of our team when we don't have enough time in the day to reach out to all these people. So then we're just jumping into conversations with AI as AI is continuing the conversation forward.

Speaker 1 (39:52):
Let's say someone has looked at a property five times in under 24 hours this surfaces, texting engages them. When does the AI say, Hey, do you want to talk with Chris or Jennifer or Tiffany?

Speaker 4 (40:07):
How

Speaker 1 (40:08):
Does that go?

Speaker 4 (40:09):
So our best practice, so what we train our agents to do is to jump into the AI conversation when they're able to.

Speaker 1 (40:19):
So they become alerted that someone or someone assigned to them is active in an AI chat.

Speaker 4 (40:24):
Yes. So they'll, it's all done for our team. It's all done through a company inbox and follow-up boss. So they're alerted that this person responded to ai. They can see the chat going back and forth, and maybe they let it go on for a little while, which now that AI is better. We do tend to let it go on a little bit longer, but they're trained to jump into that conversation and take over as the ai. So don't send a text message from your own phone number, jump into the chat that is going on and continue talking as that assistant. So you kind of start end up talking about yourself in third person. But the goal of that conversation is to create that warm handoff and be like, oh, well now that I've got all of this information, I'd love to connect you with my agent. Tiffany, are you available for a quick phone call? So the text conversation is great, but our goal is always to get a voice to voice communication so then we can build that rapport, figure out all the motivations, all of those kinds of things, and then ultimately set a face-to-face appointment to convert the lead. So that's what we do with the text ai.

Speaker 1 (41:35):
Is it similar with AI calling or is that all live transfer? If so, how do you solve the live transfer issue? Kind of like the way you're talking about automated text, which is like someone kind of needs to be there. Is it only calling when it knows people are available? Just give me a minute on that.

Speaker 4 (41:53):
Yeah, it's definitely been a little bit hard. I'm not going to lie about that to figure out

Speaker 1 (42:00):
How to, you don't have 200 agents to transfer,

Speaker 4 (42:04):
Right? Yeah, we have six agents. So we've put into place some other things with, okay, we're going to do opportunity time or whatever you're on call to receive these calls. And for us it was the evening hours and weekends that were the hardest. So one is basically keeping your agents up to date on the opportunity. So having agents that are saying, Hey, I got this AI transfer call today and I'm showing properties this afternoon to them, that was really great. The more you talk about the value of those transfers, the more your agents are going to jump on those calls. Also, making sure that you have your process set up to where if it's going to a dedicated inbox in follow-up boss, that your agents have that phone number saved in their phone contacts so that they know that it's an AI transfer coming to them.

Speaker 4 (43:06):
So I mean, our phones ring all day long. Half the time it says potential spam or spam likely or what have you. We have to be able to prioritize when we answer the phone. So make sure that it's really obvious that, hey, this is a big opportunity calling you right now, you should answer. And then it becomes a little bit of a competition on follow Boss. When it says press one to accept the call, which by the way, you always need to do, if you have a shared inbox, you've got to do that. Press one, you got to do the press one. Talk to me about that some other time if you need to. But when they get that, they press one and it says, oh, your agent Joe already got this call. That's the best thing ever. They're like, oh, I need to be faster next time. So it creates a little bit of a competition, but the weekend times and the evening times we're a little bit harder. So we started doing like, Hey, you get the opportunity this weekend to answer the phone all weekend long. And oh, by the way, if you're not the one that's on duty, if you will, to answer the phone all weekend long, then you get the opportunity to ignore your phone all weekend.

Speaker 4 (44:19):
So that's created a little bit of a balance there for us and definitely increased our answer rate, but also we do get alerted when a call is missed. So there's a tag that's added. We have smart lists that say, transfer unsuccessful, agent unavailable. Okay. We need to work on those people and try to get them back on the phone.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
Really good. So much good advice in there. Besides going to unlock conference.com and learning more about Unlock and signing up and meeting you and me there and going to all of the sessions that you're producing, which are going to be awesome. How else might someone connect with you?

Speaker 4 (44:55):
You can connect with me on Instagram. If you look up my name, Tiffany Zenni, you will find every way to connect with me. I am the only one of me. It's kind of great for SEO. So you can definitely find me anywhere, or you can reach out at Tiffany at follow-up boss.com. That's the easiest one to spell and remember. And yeah, be happy to connect with you.

Speaker 1 (45:15):
Awesome. She is Tiffany. I am Ethan. Tiffany, I appreciate you being here and we both appreciate you spending time in this conversation with us.

Speaker 4 (45:23):
Absolutely. Thank you so much, Ethan. It was great to be here and look forward to hearing from more of you guys with any questions you have.

Speaker 2 (45:30):
Thanks for checking out this episode of Team Os. For email exclusive insights every week, sign up@realestateteamos.com.