The life of a real estate agent is a busy one. Their days are filled with inspections, reaching out to leads, replying to seller requests … the list goes on.
In a nutshell—it’s chaotic, says Rory Somerville, Managing Director of Ray White Bendigo. Well at least, it was chaotic before it brought on Slack.
“We’re massive Slack fans at Ray White Bendigo. Slack was a pivotal moment in our business and has since become our team’s central nervous system,” says Somerville.
“Before Slack, we had interactions everywhere—queries via email, Facebook messenger, SMS. Our email accounts were getting backlogged and we struggled to find client emails,” says Somerville.
Slack has solved this problem for the team—and then some—helping the team drive efficiencies it never thought possible.
Bidding farewell to email bottlenecks
Ray White Bendigo manages teams spread across Australia and the Philippines. With many properties on the market at any given month, having the ability to quickly triage incoming inquiries to the right person is key to closing deals faster.
“Speed is important in our industry. We need to be available to buyers, sellers and partners when they need help,” says Somerville.
Before Slack, the team struggled to triage queries, partner requests or potential leads. And as the company’s managing director, the majority of these inquiries were landing in Somerville’s inbox—and getting lost there.
“Emails were coming to me that weren’t my domain. Then, they’d get stuck there as I’m often in back-to-back meetings and inspections.”
The team needed a productivity platform that would unclutter those inboxes and supercharge efficiencies—in a word: it needed Slack.
“Slack has the depth that other collaboration platforms lack. Other platforms might enable team communication, but Slack is more than that—it’s like our brain, it centralises our information and makes our lives easier.”
Meeting a need for triaging speed
Using Slack, Ray White Bendigo has been able to unclutter its inbox. Now, all internal collaboration lands in channels—a shared space where teams can share ideas, make decisions and move work forward with a common purpose. Meanwhile, all customer queries have pride of place in Ray White Bendigo’s inbox.
“Slack has the depth that other collaboration platforms lack. Other platforms might enable team communication, but Slack is more than that—it’s like our brain, it centralises our information and makes our lives easier,” says Somerville.
Somerville describes a pre-Slack world where he’d come home each night and have to deal with 40 voicemails that had accumulated while he was in back-to-back appointments.
But now, Somerville has set up his phone to run through Slack. The team can pick up voicemails and messages and address them as they come in. For example, say a lead wants to book an inspection the next day—a team member can review it and call them back and organise that inspection.
“These voicemails used to sit on my mobile and no one else would know it existed. Now, my voicemails come through to a dedicated Slack channel and the team can action them quickly,” says Somerville.
“Around 90% of my voicemails are delegated and actioned in real-time, instead of me picking them up at 6 p.m. and having to manually delegate them.”
Working faster, not harder
Slack helps the team work faster too.
For example, huddles—virtual spaces for teams to collaborate and co-create live—help the team to drive work forward, wherever they’re based.
“Huddles allow me to have micro-moments of communication with team members. Rather than booking a meeting and wasting time on unproductive niceties, we can have conversations with anyone and it’s like they’re sitting next to me—regardless of whether they are downstairs in the office or the Philippines.”
Slack has also improved how the company works with external partners. Using Slack Connect—which moves external collaboration out of siloed email threads and into the same place—Ray White Bendigo can partner with loan market brokers, accountants, bookkeepers or other Ray White branches with a click of a button.
“It’s non-negotiable now; if they want to work with our business we don’t want to do it via text, email or phone. It has to be via Slack,” says Somerville.
“I truly don’t think we would have seen such momentous growth or have been able to scale without Slack.”
Boosting customer service, one person at a time
Looking to the future, Somerville and his team are excited about canvases—a surface where teams can find, manage and share knowledge with ease.
“We love pinning documents and notes to our channels because it removes the need to search through our Google Drive for specific documents. With canvases, I can see our productivity skyrocketing further as we won’t need to scroll through pinned items.”
“By bringing our work into Slack, we can collaborate, work together, tag, share, discuss and innovate—and ultimately provide better service.”
“I truly don’t think we would have seen such momentous growth or have been able to scale without Slack.”
