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New service aims to bridge gap between online and offline property-seekers
Global property portal Lamudi is rolling out a real estate hotline to bridge the gap between offline and online house-hunters in the emerging markets.
The Dial For Home hotline, which is being progressively launched in more than 30 countries across the Lamudi network, is tailored to property-seekers without Internet access.
The service allows house-hunters to call a toll-free hotline and explain their requirements to a customer service representative. They then receive a text message with details about available properties to buy or rent, including a link to the online listing.
Lamudi Global’s Co-Founder, Kian Moini, said: “In many of our countries, the Internet penetration is rising fast but remains quite low. Often the key decision-makers when it comes to real estate are in an older age bracket and are not always early adopters of new technologies.
The Dial For Home hotline gives these offline property-seekers access to the thousands of properties listed on the Lamudi website. For those without a steady Internet connection, this means their dream home is now just a phone call away.”
In Uganda, Dial for Home was launched on 10th March 2015.
Lamudi has developed dedicated software to streamline the process and allow customer service staff to easily cross-reference the caller’s requirements with the company’s database of more than 800,000 listings. At the same time, developers and real estate agents receive an SMS with the caller’s details so they can contact the property-seeker.
Additionally, a quality control team later follows up with each caller and sends through details about further available properties if the house-hunter did not secure their first choice.
In Bangladesh, where the hotline was first launched last year, the Lamudi team is now receiving more than 450 calls per month and sending out more than 3400 SMS leads to developers. In total, nearly 35,000 SMS leads have been sent to developers in Bangladesh over the last 10 months.
Rajesh Grover, Managing Director of Lamudi Bangladesh, said: “Dial For Home was introduced to target housing decision makers, who are not always well represented among Lamudi users. The service sees us become a one-stop property portal for both offline and online house-hunters.
The hotline has also helped draw traffic to our website, with a significant increase in total page views since the inception of Dial for Home. In fact, we have seen a massive four-fold increase in the number of paying clients since the launch of the service.”
Dial for Home is now available in all Lamudi countries in Asia and parts of Africa, with the global roll out to be complete in the coming weeks.
