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Jennifer Chen

December 9, 2019

Real Estate Phone Systems: 8 Must-Have Features

Learn about the real estate phone system and solutions that agencies are using to manage important conversations. Integrate cell phones, auto attendants, and internet fax.

Tech-enabled real estate offices use Telzio to improve their communication flow, and ultimately deliver the best experience to their clients. In this article, you’ll learn about the modern phone solutions that agencies are using to streamline and manage important conversations around real estate.

Take Work Calls from Anywhere

All agents today use cell phones to communicate with clients. Telzio enables agents to continue using their cell phones, while integrating their desk phones for maximum productivity.

With the Telzio Mobile App, agents can use their office line from anywhere. Any call to their desk phone, also rings on the app. This also means that office staff can transfer calls directly to agents on the app.

The app provides robust capabilities, including:

  • Making and receiving calls
  • Sending and receiving texts
  • Listening to voicemail
  • Hosting 3-way calls
  • Hold, mute, and speakerphone
  • Call recording
  • Company Directory + Presence
  • Contacts
  • Do-Not-Disturb
  • Option to change outbound calling number

Some agents prefer to ditch their desk phone altogether, and just use the mobile app for their office line. The added benefit of this is that it reduces overhead costs when onboarding new agents.

Route Calls with an Auto Attendant

The Auto Attendant feature is a must-have for every office. Even if you have a receptionist, an auto attendant quickly routes calls 24/7/365, provides information to callers, and frees up time for your staff.

In the past, an auto attendant was an enterprise feature that cost tens of thousands of dollars program into a phone system. Today, Telzio enables you to easily set up auto attendants with custom greetings, hold music, and call routing.

Auto attendants can direct incoming calls to a variety of “destinations”, including:

  • Office phones, cell phones, and landlines
  • Hunt groups
  • Conference bridges
  • Announcements
  • Voicemail

The ability to route calls to groups of agents at the same time or in order can be ideal for different real estate teams, properties, or needs of the callers. The need to route calls to individual cell phones is imperative in real estate with agents constantly in the field.

Real estate companies may need to route calls to a virtual receptionist if no one can answer from the office or the field. Easily changing menu options, queues, messages, and routing is well suited to real estate. This can be driven by inventory changes, agent availability, and the divisions between sales, rental, commercial and residential.

Receive Voicemails to Email

Two things are constants in real estate: time is always against you and every voicemail is important. Receiving voicemails by email ensures that you don’t miss important messages, and it also saves you time.

Telzio sends voicemails to your email, and also converts them to text. You can quickly read the voicemail transcription, and then press play directly from the email to listen to the message if needed. It’s much easier to sneak a peek at your cellphone to read a voicemail transcribed to an email than to listen to a voicemail during a showing or meeting.

Text with Clients

Telzio provides the ability to text with your business phone numbers. Texting can be enabled on both local numbers, as well as toll free numbers.

This means that in addition to texting privately with clients, phone numbers used on marketing campaigns can also be used for texting. Encouraging potential clients to text can increase engagement significantly.

Incoming texts can be routed to one person, or to a group. In the case of forwarding to a group, the first person to text back will continue a one-to-one text conversation with the prospect, and has the option to re-assign the text to someone else to take over the conversation.

Send Faxes Online

Agents use Telzio to manage their faxes more efficiently in a central, online location. It’s easy to send faxes online with a simple drag-and-drop. Incoming faxes are sent to your email, and you can even have them delivered to one person or to a group.

All incoming and outgoing faxes are stored online, where it’s easy to access and download them. There’s no limit to the amount of fax files that can be stored online, and you can even set up your faxes so they automatically download into a storage drive every so often.

One of the key differences between Telzio’s fax feature and other virtual fax services is the collaboration aspect. With Telzio, agents can:

  • Add internal comments on faxes that only other colleagues can see
  • Tag faxes with custom labels so they’re easy to find later, for example by property name or client
  • Forward faxes to colleagues along with internal comments

Related:How to Send a Fax Online

Host Conference Calls

Real estate requires constant collaboration with buyers, sellers, agents, service providers, lawyers, financial institutions and many other people and businesses. When you can instantly and simply hostconference calls to accommodate groups of various sizes from any location, things get done rather than trying to chase down each person and relay information.

It’s simple to add a conference line to your Telzio phone system for regular conference calls for groups of unlimited size and start them on the road via a mobile app on your cell phone. You can also provide a direct dial number for multiple participants who plan to call in at a scheduled time.

Record Calls from the Mobile App

The nature of the real estate business involves countless phone calls. Realtors often need to reference information from these calls later and make notes for all phases of the sales and/or rental process.

Telzio enables you torecord calls via the mobile app, and access this recording later. When you’re on the road and unable to take notes, this recording can provide a valuable reference.

Larger projects can involve multiple brokers and assistants, so a call recording can be a major time saver while avoiding a miscommunication that can have major repercussions. With Telzio, you can view and download recordings, and forward them to an assistant to take appropriate next steps.

Get Toll Free & Local Phone Numbers

Having presence in a local market is the essence of being the go-to neighborhood agent. This means having a local phone number in that market. Telzio enables you to get local numbers from cities across over 60 countries.

When working with international clients, being able to get your hands on an international phone number can provide an added aspect of high-end client relations. Imagine working with an overseas client in Dubai buying investment property in the states, and providing them with a UAE number to contact you.

When it comes to branding, agencies will often look for a toll free vanity number. Keep in mind that phone numbers are proprietary to your business, so if you own a number like 1-833-REALTOR, it can provide substantial value. You own the number, and can take it with you if you switch providers. Not only does a vanity number make it easier for people to remember you, it’s also worth money.

Real estate agencies like Keller Williams use Telzio phone numbers to track the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. Using a different number on each campaign enables you to see which ad is working, and where leads are coming from.

Related: How to Customize Your Caller ID Name

Real Estate Phone Systems from Telzio

It’s tools like these that set agents who use Telzio apart from those who use a regular phone service. In a business where building relationships through communication is key, a phone system is not an area where you want your agency to fall behind. Especially when today, you can get a virtual phone system from Telzio that is extremely easy to use.

In fact, Telzio helps you cut cords, and enables you to ditch your landline service and fax machine. Business phone systems from Telzio don’t require a separate landline service or switchboard hardware for routing calls to extensions. All phone services and calling features can be easily managed online, through a user-friendly dashboard. All you need is an internet connection and computer to be up and running.

Related: VoIP for Real Estate - 10 Vital Features for Top Brokers

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