The Dark Side of AI (Artificial Intelligence)
Are chatbots worth real estate agents risking their client relationships?
The advent of AI (artificial intelligence) promises to be one of the most significant technological leaps in human history. Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, predicts that by 2029, computers will be able to outsmart even the most intelligent humans, and every industry will see ripple effects from this amazing evolution.
But not everyone believes that the arrival of AI is good for people, and especially for consumers. While many of us embrace the speed and convenience of AI, others question whether this technology will replace them at a job, violate their privacy or generate faulty, inaccurate information about them.
The problem is that there are no real standards or best practices for how to use AI, but that hasn’t stopped many professions from trying to harness its power. Real estate agents today are hungry to understand AI. They have heard about how it can streamline tedious processes and save them time, and they want to use that technology to grow their business — right now.
In doing so, they also need to be wary enough to make the right choices. Because even in real estate today, there is a dark side of AI. Everyone needs to be very aware of not only the potential good this technology can do, but also the unintended consequences it can bring, the most serious of which is broken trust and a client relationship that can’t be repaired.
The revolution is well underway
The Amazon Echo and its Alexa virtual assistant is probably the most demonstrative presence of AI in our homes today, with an estimated 35 million units deployed. The resources that the Seattle ecommerce giant is pouring into making Alexa and the Echo product line progressively smarter is staggering. Already, it has some terrific, practical, time-saving applications for real estate.
Take open houses. Plug in an Echo Dot or Slap on a portable battery, hook it up to the home’s WiFi or create a hotspot on your phone, and you can have Alexa be your automated tour guide. You can put one in every room in the house. Amazon’s new blueprint technology allows any agent to write a script that Alexa can replay when prompted with the right question — no coding necessary. She can tell a potential buyer about every room and even answer questions about the neighborhood.
The “wow” factor is akin to being one of the first agents to use an iPad for open house registration. Everyone wanted to play with an iPad, so everyone registered who attended your open house back when nobody registered at an open house.
A chatbot for every agent
Another practical application for real estate comes from modern chatbots powered by AI, Chatbots have proven themselves highly valuable to big-name companies like Apple and Microsoft. They are being used to simplify consumer communication and reduce the time it takes to answer frequently asked questions, and they can do it faster and more efficiently than humans.
That’s prompted brokers and agents to deploy chatbot tech on their websites to execute many of the same kinds of tasks.
But on the other side of the coin, there is a dark side to AI that can come from a chatbot. This is when technology has a detrimental impact on your business. The risks are real, and the question agents have to ask is this: Can a chatbot or other AI-powered tech do more harm than good for my business?
The ‘T’ test
There are two words that come to mind when one thinks about how to best use AI, and they both start with the letter “T.” The first word is transparent.
AI must be transparent. Consumers need to know upfront that they are interacting with an algorithm or chatbot. By setting truthful expectations from the beginning of the conversation, users will be so much more forgiving when a mistake is made.
Remember when tech pioneer Guy Kawasaki said, “Beta 1.0 means never having to say you’re sorry?” Well, the same idea applies to AI: If you let people know they are dealing with it, they will be more forgiving if it makes a mistake because they know we are still in the early stages and the chatbots are still learning.
But some companies don’t realize the benefit of transparency, and they try to hide the fact that they are using a chatbot. When you’re asking the consumer to participate, transparency is a two-way street. If you are asking them to disclose personal information, then you are going to have to fully disclose the true nature of their conversational partner to them.
The other thing to keep in mind is that there really needs to be something in it for the consumer — there has to be a benefit. You can’t just offer AI because it’s cool and competitors are using it. The benefit to the consumer needs to be compelling so it makes them want to get involved.
The Second ‘T’
The second “T” that has to go hand-in-hand with AI is trust.
Trust is an absolute necessity for AI to work. And that’s the great irony — because real estate is all about trust. Trust is the single most important thing to an agent-consumer relationship. Yet we have seen AI in real estate used in ways that undermines the confidence of the consumer.
One simple example is the AI gold rush that’s going on right now, leveraging big data to craft predictive analytics and provide seller leads. Think about how many different companies right now are touting now that they are offering seller leads based on predictive analytics.
Now spin that to the consumer experience. You fit the AI profile of a seller who is highly likely to sell within the next three months, except for one important thing: You are not interested in selling your house right now — at all. Yet all these companies have identified you as a hot potential seller lead. How many calls, as a consumer, do you need to get before this scenario becomes a terrible AI-based experience? When you discover that AI was the culprit, do you trust AI anymore? More importantly, would you trust any of those agents who called you based on that AI?
If you are undermining consumer confidence, it’s just not worth it, especially in real estate. You can’t assume that the consumer can be taken advantage of like a passive dummy. There’s already a big group of people who don’t trust technology. If they are watching what is happening with AI so far, they are not likely to be fans.
It’s worth repeating: The real estate world is centered around trust, and if you are doing something that undermines trust, you’re playing a short-term game for a long-term loss. If a real estate agent relies on a chatbot, it needs to behave as human-like as possible, but it also needs to disclose that it is a chatbot. Being dishonest to your consumers and pretending that a chatbot is human can lead to a permanent loss of trust.
The Future of Chatbots
Now, I’m not saying chatbots and AI algorithms don’t have a place. Chatbots still have great potential for increasing productivity and improving customer service by handling basic, routine, repeatedly asked questions. The most crucial step is to know when that chatbot should hand off the conversation over to a real, live human being.
To be truly successful, the perks of AI shouldn’t just aid the company and its bottom line. They must also benefit the consumer.
