Global Real Estate Virtual Assistant Interview—Seek the promise of outsourcing and enjoy the quality of service!
Hello everyone, welcome to Callnovo’s global multilingual customer service outsourcing center. I am the moderator Hannah. Everyone who knows Callnovo’s, understands that in addition to providing dedicated professional, flexible, and personalized multilingual customer service and technical support solutions to small and medium-sized businesses around the world, Callnovo also has been operating Virtual Assistant services for nearly ten years, and it is one of the most experienced and mature service sectors.
What is a remote virtual assistant? Simply put, it is a professional who provides assistant services remotely over the Internet. A remote virtual assistant provides customers with business appointments, document preparation, business plan development, and lead generation at different locations on the other side of the globe through email, livechat, SMS, telephone, social media, and other interactive channels. Callnovo’s multilingual virtual assistants can remotely implement a “one-stop” service model and stand by 24 hours a day, regardless of the language used by the administrative assistant.
In this episode, we want to introduce to you the experience of Callnovo virtual assistant project operation in the US real estate industry.
The real estate virtual assistant project has been operated in Callnovo for more than eight years and gradually owns a large high performance team. Our team will provide customized “one-stop” assistant solutions based on different real estate agents and company needs, from Marketing, TC, home rental, home decoration staging to real estate Social Media maintenance management.
Today,we are honored to invite several project management representatives with extensive experiences in California real estate, and they will share with us their experiences of virtual assistant services in real estate. They are: Khloe, director of the remote virtual assistant team at a well-known real estate company in California; Lisa, assistant director of American House Decoration Company, China Division; Summer, Global Chinese Sales Champion and Chinese regional assistant; and Joanna, experienced remote sales assistant.
These four guests are the best in the team of Callnovo virtual assistants, who are trusted and praised by realtor agents. In the daily work of remote assistants, in addition to the comprehensive and in-depth knowledge of the entire real estate transaction expertise in the United States, each has its strengths in the real estate process.
Moderator: In the entire real estate virtual assistant team of Callnovo Call Center, Khloe must be the veteran! Khloe, you have been with this project for eight years. Can you share the development and growth of the project with us?
Khloe: Hi, everyone! Yes, Since the launch of the project in 2011, I have experienced the whole process of project growth. The remote assistant team I worked for in California Real Estate Agent has grown from one person, like myself, to the present, a Chinese- English bilingual assistant team with more than 30 team members. I am pleased and also proud of our company. These eight years of development are inseparable from the concerted efforts and enthusiasm of our Callnovo colleagues. The Callnovo Virtual Assistant team is a relatively high-quality team, and almost every employee has an undergraduate degree, and with a low staff turnover rate. In recent years, with the increasing demand of assistants in the US real estate market, we have also set up a number of virtual assistant branch teams, accumulated comprehensive real estate expertise and skills, and gradually improved our assistant training system and assessment criteria, such as how to operate MLS, Skyslope, Zipform, Docusign, Zillow, Yelp, Loopnet and other real estate-related systems and websites, related sales patter and techniques for customer reservation by outbound cold call, as well as prepare, follow up, collect and upload all transaction information, contracts and related documentation throughout the transfer process, and form standardized and systematic training courses.
Moderator: Callnovo’s virtual assistant project has indeed rewarding along the way! In the perspective of a real estate agent, what do you think is the main help provided by the virtual assistants?
Khloe：As far as the project we are working on, we can help real estate agents to accomplish many unexpected tasks remotely. For example, once the service is started, the agent doesn’t need to spend a lot of time to organize the training materials and provide essential knowledge and skill training to our new recruits, as we already have a relatively systematic real estate basic knowledge training course, which can significantly reduce the burden and the cost of the new employee training.
Our assistant team has different divisions, of which the marketing department is mainly responsible for cold calls, following up new and old customers, designing and producing electronic flyers and electronic brochures. Besides, as a marketing department, we also often need to maintain and update listings on various Chinese and English social media websites, such as Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Youtube, WeChat official account, Chinese consulting network, and personal real estate website. TC is the core department of our assistant team, which is responsible for preparing, following up, collecting transaction information, scheduling, contracts, and related documents during the entire transfer process of new or second-hand housing, such as preparing a purchase contract, collecting deposits, making appointments for termite inspections, and arranging buyer inspections.
For property rental, we can also help buyer agents to standardize and refine rental management, contact relevant inspection companies or maintenance companies in time, and apply for building management, water, electricity, gas, garbage, network, and other daily services. Of course, we also have multi-skills assistants based on the needs of different agents.
Moderator: No wonder these assistants are so popular with real estate agents! Khloe, from an administrative point of view, except for showing & Open house that must be completed by a US assistant, most of the work can be done through our remote assistant assistance agent, is that right?
Khloe: indeed.
Moderator: You just mentioned “ the United States Local Assistant.” What advantages does our current remote virtual assistant have over local assistants?
Khloe: Our strengths are reflected in three aspects:
1.Low labor costs: The cost of hiring a Chinese virtual assistant is about 40% lower than the cost of hiring a US local assistant.
2.The time difference between China and the United States: The time difference between the United States and China is about 15 hours. After the American agent gets off work, the Chinese assistant will start to work on the document preparation and processing that remains after the business negotiation during the day. In particular, for the agents who are expanding the Chinese buyer market that requires an assistant to follow up with Chinese buyers in China. This business operation is equivalent to the agent running a business 24 hours a day, racing against time, and significantly improving the competitiveness in the industry.
3.Low staff turnover rate, zero competition risk. According to our understanding from many brokers, the assistants they hired from the local area often resigned after a few months, they took the property data and information and started to set up their own company, eventually becoming a new competitor. At Callnovo, we actively manage our virtual assistants to eliminate competition in the industry. Especially in third-tier cities where job opportunities are relatively scarce, Callnovo’s employees have an average working age of at least two years with a sound human resources system and a salary and welfare policy, and many virtual remote assistants have been working for six to eight years.
Moderator: After khlole’s patient and meticulous explanation and analysis, I believe the advantages of Callnovo virtual assistant are precious, especially for small and medium-sized real estate agents in the United States.
Next, I want to continue to talk about these “advantages.” I know that Summer is currently serving a project for a well-known real estate person in California, and you are one of the core members of the assistant team, and you are highly dependent and trusted by the agent, even though this agent has a team in the US and China. So, what do you think is your advantage compared to the US local assistant?
Summer: the US local assistants and us are working together to learn from each other. The American assistant fought on the front line, handling urgent problems, receiving walk-in customers, coordinating internal affairs and sales, which that would be hard for Chinese assistants to complete the task due to the geographical location. My remote task is like logistics support, and mainly responsible for all document processing, pre-sales, and after-sales service, and regular marketing tasks, and timely checks for missing vacancies, which plays a complementary role. My principle is to complete all the tasks that the boss has told me in a serious manner, to prioritize and no fuss. Our common goal is to assist agents to make every single transaction complete smoothly so that buyers can live happily in the new house, and the seller can receive the payment as soon as possible.
Moderator: Perfect cooperation! Will the 15-hour time difference affect your collaboration with local California assistants? How do you hand over the work between you and the American assistant?
Summer：The time difference is a disadvantage and may also be an advantage. The Chinese Virtual Assistant team in Callnovo has also arranged a full-time night shift assistant, which genuinely provides customers with 24/7 service. The way we hand over is mainly through WeChat and email. The Chinese assistant will leave a message to the US assistant every day after work to the work that needs to be followed the next day or keep eyes on all the time, and tasks that can be processed later, so that the American assistant can follow up the next day according to the priorities of the matter, without any delays.
Moderator: Next, we will invite our third guest, Lisa. Lisa is different from Khloe and Summer, and she mainly serves the project from a well-known California home improvement company. Lisa, can you tell us about how your daily work is carried out?
Lisa: My clients in this project are dedicated to the global interior design. American designers use innovative and unique design styles to promote houses to sell at a faster rate and a higher price. As a virtual assistant, our team is responsible for all order tracking, extensive image processing, scheduling of shipments and collections and other tasks. Besides, to seek better partners and sources of supply, our Chinese assistants also need to represent the client company to participate in the annual furniture exhibition at home or abroad. When facing the owners of the Chinese market, it is also a time to highlight the value of our Chinese assistants. We need to participate in the entire service process directly. For example, go to the field to take photos and draw a plan of the entire house after the customer made a reservation, and then send it to a US colleague for design, and follow-up and communicate with customers.
Moderator: In the United States, all successful real estate agents pay special attention to advertising and publicity. When it comes to this, I must mention Joanna. Joanna, as a virtual marketing specialist at Callnovo, how did you help your agent to carry out the promotion?
Joanna：In the era of information, traffic is king. Traditional paper and television media have become obsolete or costly and have little effect. Now, we are more focused on the promotion of new media and the increase in exposure. Through experiments and discussions, my colleague from the United States, and I have developed a new publicity system. The system mainly promotes through telephone, social media, livechat, and mail. From the feedback obtained so far, and the agent has fully recognized the effect.
Moderator: As a remote salesperson, it is a significant disadvantage not to be able to communicate face-to-face with customers. How do you gain the trust of customers by phone? What do you think is the most critical factor?
Joanna: The most critical factor is teamwork. As a sales team, we have to carry out cold calling in the early stage and face-to-face communication in the later stage. The two stages require cooperation between each other. Since we are doing marketing remotely, the advantage we play is naturally in the cold call stage. We combine the early stage cold call with negotiation in the later stage to save the sales team time and effort in sales activities effectively. The so-called “know yourself and know your enemy, and you will never be defeated,” the most important thing is to understand the market and what you can bring to the target audience, regardless is selling products or services. The demand point of the target audience is the starting point for all marketing.
The Callnovo Call Center builds an efficient and stable team of professional virtual assistants via the Internet and VoIP, and providing customized services is the key to the success of the project. I am very grateful to these excellent virtual assistants for participating in this interview so that everyone has a deeper understanding of the virtual assistant service. In Callnovo, there are a large number of professional assistants who are as professional as they are providing sincere and efficient assistant services to customers in the US, Canada, UK, Singapore, Australia, and other regions! I hope that every dedicated virtual assistant of Callnovo will shine in their respective positions and show their strength and recognition.