What not answering on weekends can cost a real estate business

We called 40 real estate businesses in Madrid 78 times, on a weekend and a public holiday, the way any buyer would. 88% of those calls went unhandled.

Most people looking for a home work Monday to Friday and have little free time. Weekends and public holidays are when they can finally compare homes and call: it's when a buyer is most available to talk and say what they're looking for.

We wanted to know what happens when that buyer takes the step. So we put ourselves in their shoes and called.

How we did it

• 40 businesses in Madrid that sell homes, mostly mid-to-high-end and with international clients.
• 78 calls in total, on a weekend evening and on the November 2 public holiday, always to the number each business publishes on its website.
• Then we waited for them to call us back.

To us, handling a call isn't just picking up the phone. It means someone listens to the client and sorts out what they need at that moment: the price, when they can see the home or how the purchase would work.

The main results

Put another way: if a buyer had called these 40 businesses, at 33 of them they could never have asked anything, and none of those 33 would have got in touch.

What happened on each call

The day and the time don't matter

We expected things to improve at midday, right in the middle of a public holiday. They didn't: it was the time with the worst result.

Answering isn't handling

What surprised us most was that 7 of the 40 businesses already have an automated system that answers: keypad menus, recorded voices or virtual assistants. They know the problem exists and have invested in solving it.

But nobody handled any of those 11 calls. Some examples:

• "We'll be right with you." A recorded voice promised it and, after five rings, nobody came on. It happened both times.
• "This isn't the right line." On a keypad menu we pressed rent by mistake and told the assistant we wanted to buy. It just kept repeating the same phrase.
• Only two languages. Every assistant we came across worked only in Spanish and English, in a city with buyers from all over the world.

A system that answers but doesn't handle the call can leave a worse impression than voicemail: the client feels they've been promised something that doesn't happen.

Size doesn't help either

We separated the 14 offices of big international brands from the rest, and the big brands did worse:

The big brands also hold most of the automated systems: 9 of the 11 calls that only a machine answered.

Did they call us back?

Only 2 of the 40 businesses called us afterwards, both after the weekend call: one about 13 hours later and the other about 20 hours later. After the public holiday calls, nobody had called back when we closed the study.

Even in the best cases, the client spent the night with no answer. In that time, a buyer with real interest may already have spoken to two other businesses.

The ones that got it right

7 businesses handled our call at least once, and only 2 managed it on both calls. They had something in common: a short notice at the start and then someone who really looked after us.

What this costs: an example

Take a business that gets 10 calls over a weekend and apply the results of the study:

If the average home were €500,000 with a 3% commission, that business would be missing out on about €15,000 a month, €180,000 a year.

Every business will have its own numbers: its call volume, its prices and its commission.

What we take from this

People in this industry work long hours, and weekends and public holidays are for resting. This isn't about a lack of effort. The problem is that just when the client is most willing to talk, they get the least response. That interest cools, and when someone finally calls back, it's no longer the same client.

This post started on our LinkedIn page.