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New research reveals peak times for key Live Chat enquiries to estate agents

Alice, Moneypenny Receptionist

Our latest research has revealed the peak times that house-hunters and vendors are choosing to get in touch with estate and letting agents via Live Chat.

As the property sector’s leading outsourced communications provider, our dedicated property Live Chat team – which includes ex-sales negotiators and letting agents – can answer chats 24 hours a day, either on a fully outsourced basis or offering overflow support.

The research analysed thousands of chats to estate and letting agents over the past year, and looked at the peak enquiry times for valuations, viewings and property detail requests.

Viewings

The ‘golden hour’ for valuation enquiries via Live Chat was 12pm-1pm, closely followed by 9am-10am during the week. On weekday evenings the sweet spot fell between 6pm-7pm with 8pm-9pm proving the second busiest hour. At the weekend the key point of the day was 10am-11am and 7pm-8pm out of hours. Overall, the most popular day for viewings was Thursday and the busiest month was August.

Property detail requests

Moneypenny Receptionists received the most requests for property details between 1pm-2pm, followed by 2pm-3pm and 6pm-7pm once the office door closed on weekdays. At weekends, requests were particularly popular in the afternoon with 3pm-4pm seeing the highest volume of chats. Monday accounted for the busiest day and March the busiest month.

Valuations

The data found house-hunters were most likely to get in touch via Live Chat between 11am-12pm and 10am-11am during the week. In the evening, this peak period occurred between 7pm-8pm. At weekends the highest number of enquiries fell a little later in the day, between 12pm-1pm, and interestingly 10pm-11pm in the evening. The busiest day overall was Tuesday and the busiest month was April.

Samantha Jones, Commercial Manager for Property at Moneypenny, says: “These findings outline why live chat is no longer a ‘nice to have’, but an essential part of any agents’ customer service offering and marketing tool belt. We are seeing first-hand the significant upturn in leads it can generate for agents, and also the improvement it offers customers in terms of their overall experience. It’s not about replacing other means of communications, but the realisation that customers expect a richer experience with the ability to engage when they want, and in a way that suits them at that time.”

In addition, the research revealed a significant amount of customers getting in touch through Live Chat during the ‘commuter’ slot of 7am-9am. In fact, 53% of property chats take place out of hours. We also predict that small businesses – including estate and letting agents – will increase their use of live chat by 87% in the next 12-18 months.

Samantha adds: “It confirms what agents already know: it’s vital to be available and ‘open for business’ 24/7. Just one web visitor could be worth thousands of pounds to an agent if not more. Add in the impact of using a proactive chat feature which ‘nudges’ browsers into chatting and it becomes even more powerful. Urban & Rural, for example, saw a 98% increase in live chat leads after it introduced our proactive Live Chat service. It takes less than five minutes to set live chat up, and the job of getting the actual software is as simple as copying and pasting.”

Our 80-strong team of dedicated property receptionists support over 2,000 estate and letting agents across the UK, answering in excess of two million calls and chats every year.

To help decide whether live chat is right for you, try out our new Live Chat calculator tool.

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