Houm is a real estate technology company offering a marketplace for investors, buyers, renters, and sellers in Chile, Mexico, and Colombia. The company’s freelance agents, called “Houmers”, facilitate the relationship between property owners and prospective buyers or renters, helping make the process seamless, online, and accessible. Houm now has over $850 million USD in real estate under management. The startup grows double-digit every month, with more than 600 people on its team.

Challenge

Houm’s acquisition, sales and customer support teams were looking for better ways to engage prospective leads interested in buying or renting a property. Given the volume of incoming leads, it would often take up to two full days for buyers or renters to get a response from Houmers, leading to missed opportunities and lost sales.

No-shows - Prospective leads would frequently miss appointment reminders sent through SMS and email, leading to no-shows. Agents would then spend valuable time trying to reschedule these appointments.

Use of different WhatsApp numbers -Houmers were each using a different WhatsApp number, limiting Houm’s ability to track conversations or provide a unified experience for both buyers and renters. As a result, messages would get lost with no backup, making it difficult for teams to follow up with leads or for customer success agents to process lease documentation. 

Few NPS survey completions - Low response rates for NPS surveys also made it challenging for Houm to collect the feedback needed to improve sales processes.

Houm was in search of a platform that could help teams overcome those challenges. Specifically, it needed a solution that could coordinate engagement across the buyer and renter journey with all departments.

Solution

Houm was able to reduce drop-offs and increase the number of qualified leads in its pipeline by eliminating manual tasks and encouraging leads to take immediate action throughout the sales process.

Move more leads further down the funnel

By automating tasks and communication with buyers and renters, Houm was able to move leads more efficiently through its sales funnel.

The team followed up with leads using template messages and routed them to available agents, helping reduce response time. 

• Houm sent automated appointment reminders through channels leads were more likely to check, reducing the number of no-shows. 

• Leads could schedule and manage their appointments directly on WhatsApp, without the need to talk with an agent.

• Leads who missed appointments could be reactivated with an automated message.

• Leads could send application documents and submit NPS surveys more conveniently through WhatsApp.

Building trust with local phone numbers

Houm purchased local numbers for Chile, Mexico, and Colombia from Bird and integrated them into a central number for the company that customers can call and message. This singular number is also the same for regular phone calls and WhatsApp, helping build trust and consistency with potential buyers or renters.

Results

Houm is now able to qualify, assign, schedule appointments and respond to leads more efficiently. As a result, the team increased the number of qualified leads by 64%, all while reducing its response time.

“We are now able to convert customers faster and reduce drop-offs. Potential leads are more likely to buy or rent a property,” says Marcela Molina, Product Owner Demand Acquisition, at Houm.

In just a week of implementing Bird’s solutions, Houm’s NPS survey completions surpassed the total number of completions for the last three months. With ample feedback, they can now make informed decisions on how to improve their processes and remove bottlenecks from their buyer and renter journey.

Houm is looking to continue using Bird to build more complex flows and create an end-to-end experience to keep leads engaged throughout the entire buying and renting process.

"We are now able to convert customers faster and reduce drop-offs. Potential leads are more likely to buy or rent a property."

Marcela Molina, Product Owner Demand Acquisition