Last month was the kick-off of our 2nd Batch of ELEVATE – Europe’s first Bot Accelerator. We really are bursting with excitement about our 5 new teams from 4 different countries and feel thrilled to introduce them to you too. So that’s what we’re going to be doing over the next couple of weeks.
Starting off today is Botplan from San Mateo, USA. Botplan’s chatbot converts online traffic into leads for real estate agents and brokers by instantly providing answers to customer’s questions online. We asked Jatinder Singh, Botplan co-founder & newly discovered Käsekrainer & Glühwein addict a couple of questions
When and how was your first experience with a bot?
My first chatbot experience was on NewsBytes chatbot on Facebook Messenger.
Do you have a favorite chatbot?
Yes – Botplan’s Chatbot for Real Estate ?. The best in the business.
Why should someone use your solution / What is the problem you are solving?
Real estate agents spend on average $400 a month driving traffic to their websites. However, they are not able to convert that traffic into leads, simply because their websites lack a live engagement tool. A real estate lead in the US is worth $4000 on average. Our tool costs only $9.95 per channel per month. Even if our tool only provides one incremental leads a month, it will offer an RoI of 40,000%
What’s your bot‘s superpower?
At the core, our bot is a Lead Capture bot; we have designed it to be very respectful in capturing lead information. E,g., it seeks customer’s permission on their preferred way to be contacted. It also allows customer to talk about their availability for an appointment using natural language like “any time tomorrow after 2 pm”. It works like an experienced receptionist that can work with very little inputs from the customer and make appropriate decisions.
Do you have any advice for peers interested in building a bot?
My advice is to start building a bot using off the shelf solutions to evaluate whether your bot solves a real problem. Once you get feedback from actual users, then start thinking about what tech stack will really help you build a bot that serve the needs of those actual users. This early feedback from the market is essential in making sure that the time and resources spent on building the comprehensive chatbot are well spent.
Since you are based in the US and came to Vienna specifically for ELEVATE, tell us how you imagined Austria to be and what it turned out to be.
I have always wanted to visit Vienna, and I was super lucky to come to Vienna just when the Christmas season started. I really enjoyed the Christmas markets around town and especially the one at City Hall. The Gluhwine is not to be missed at the Christmas markets. Vienna has great food and cafes, which are fairly affordable. Overall, I loved my first trip to Vienna and I am looking forward to go back for future meet ups.
What was the weirdest thing you got to know/do in Austria?
Drink beers while I am walking the street ?
Your last words to the community (for now)?
The team at ELEVATE is experienced, smart, kind, and friendly. They are not only helping us with our chatbot, but also made introductions to local Angel funds within my first week of joining ELEVATE. I am very happy to have joined ELEVATE and excited about future possibilities.
