158 Balancing Technology and Human Connection - Nick Chitty Mar 29 2023

Greg Bray: [00:00:00] Hello everybody, and welcome to today's episode of The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse.

Greg Bray: And a big special thank you to our episode sponsor NterNow. If you have found that your inventory home count is growing, you may want to talk to NterNow at nternow.com to learn more.

Today we are excited to welcome to the show Nick Chitty, who is the VP of Sales at CommVersion. Thank you, Nick, for joining us.

Nick Chitty: Great to be here, Greg. Thank you for the invitation.

Kevin Weitzel: Can I make one [00:01:00] clarifier? That's CommVersion, not Conversion, right? CommVersion, like communications and conversion combined into CommVersion. Is that correct?

Nick Chitty: Yeah, you got it. You got it.

Kevin Weitzel: That's a killer name, dude. Killer.

Nick Chitty: We'd like to think so.

Greg Bray: I gotta say, Nick, I'm pretty sure you are our first European-based guest. I was gonna say international, but we've had somebody from Canada, but Nick is actually in London today people, coming to you from London. So, that's a milestone for us, right? Branching out into the world, so we're excited. Well, tell us a little bit about yourself, Nick. Help us get to know you better.

Nick Chitty: So, as you said, I'm Nick. I'm the VP of Sales at CommVersion. So, I align closely and work closely with our top homeowner clients to enhance their onsite conversion rate and more broadly to navigate the current digital landscape.

As you can probably tell, as you said, not from the US. I'm born in London and raised in England, so across the pond from you guys. But now working closely with our clients in Austin, Dallas, and the surrounding regions as well.

Kevin Weitzel: So, normally I would say, Hey, why don't you gimme something personal about you? But I took the liberty of [00:02:00] going on your LinkedIn profile. And I saw that you went to one of the coolest named universities on the planet, Warwick. It just sounds cool to say like, I went to Warwick. But on top of that, you were a rugby player, right?

Nick Chitty: Yeah, in a previous life. In a previous life before my shoulders gave in.

Kevin Weitzel: Now, are we talking about just collegiate level or are we going into like semi-professional level?

Nick Chitty: So, I went to a fairly good rugby school, and then played kind of first 15 at university. I did get a little scalp for Cyprus in a couple of tests, but then the body kind of caved in and I proved a bit too short to make any further, unfortunately.

Kevin Weitzel: It happens, but that was injury, not eating. See, my body went to eating.

Nick Chitty: I had a bit of that as well, but yeah. Now back on the right track. Back on the right track.

Kevin Weitzel: I gotcha. But to keep with our normal flow, what is something personal that we can learn about you outside of the fact that you're from London, you played rugby, you went to the coolest named university on the planet, something personal about you, not business related?

Nick Chitty: Maybe I can make it a little bit more international. So, as well as being half English, I'm also half Greek Cypriot. [00:03:00] So, I tend to spend a portion of my summer either in Greece on one of the islands or visiting family in Cyprus. So, maybe I'm bringing two news for you guys on this episode.

Kevin Weitzel: Nice.

Greg Bray: Well, Nick, tell us a little bit about your company and the kinds of services you guys are providing.

Nick Chitty: Yeah, so we essentially conversion build and design performance marketing solutions, specifically for clients in the real estate industry. We were established in 2016. So, essentially when we set out on this journey, we saw an effective tool, i.e. LiveChat, that was being fundamentally underutilized.

So, on a practical level, cuz human-led chat is difficult to manage and to resource. In essence, it requires someone to be trained and to be responsive in real-time to questions. Although bots absolutely do have their place, they're not suitable for every client. So, high level, we wanted to use technology and leverage technology to understand user behaviors and when people are experiencing churn or friction within a website, and then combine that with human connection to deliver a better customer [00:04:00] experience and journey, I guess, through our trained agents, our in-house team of trained agents.

Greg Bray: You've got a software piece and you've got a trained agent person provided piece to the service. Am I understanding correctly?

Nick Chitty: Yeah, so I guess we're kind of a one-stop shop. So, we look to use our performance team to understand our client's websites and specific user journeys within those websites. And then on the back end, we've got an in-house team of guys that we have and we train and manage that will oversee the actual communication with leads via chat. So, we kind of do everything from start to finish for our clients.

Greg Bray: So, tell us just a little bit more about how you personally got into kind of this software/home building industry and what your path has been.

Nick Chitty: It seems like everyone in the home building industry has been in real estate forever. While I've always been passionate about it, I didn't actually take that route. So, I've always loved kind of technology. So, I believe that we can utilize technology to improve both the experience of customers, but also to ultimately drive [00:05:00] revenue as well. So, I started life out within the Fintech space working with a great startup who were looking to improve financial literacy and the experience of people on payday when they were being paid. And then saw a great opportunity here and some exciting clients we were working with. And yeah, came on board and haven't looked back since.

Greg Bray: So, when we were communicating before about topics and things, one of the terms that popped up in that conversation was omnichannel communication. And that sounds really complicated and fancy, but let's define that if you don't mind, because I'm not sure that everybody uses that word every day and kind of understands what that means. What does that mean to you, omnichannel communication?

Nick Chitty: Yeah. I guess it does sound fancy, but it's actually quite a simple term, I think. I broadly define it as businesses using different channels and methods of connecting with customers to deliver a consistent customer experience or client experience across multiple touchpoints. So, at the heart of that, we're using different methods in conjunction with one another [00:06:00] to ensure we're capturing demand on one hand, but also providing value for our customers through our interactions.

Kevin Weitzel: So, with CommVersion, you're talking about not just LiveChat, but you're also talking about bot chatting as well?

Nick Chitty: Our predominant product is humaned LiveChat. So, our utilization of tech is in the identification piece. So, how can we understand the journey to make sure we're firing chat to the right people? Because there's nothing more frustrating than going to a website and then being hit with a chatbot or a chat window straight away. So, that's our approach.

And then we typically advise, for most of our home builders, where possible to use humans. So, a human team to actually respond to questions and build that rapport. I think the important thing for us within the space is, people are buying homes. It sounds silly. They're not buying houses. This is a real personal experience and a significant experience. And actually, we wanna make sure that we can deliver that, and we think humans are the best place.

Greg Bray: So, the technology is determining when the invitation to chat [00:07:00] is presented to the website visitor if I understand correctly?

Nick Chitty: Yes.

Greg Bray: Okay. Because often that chat popup is just five seconds after it on the page. Boom, there it is. Right. That's kind of the traditional way of that. And frankly, it can be a little annoying, you know, if it's the wrong time. So, what are some of those indicators that you guys use to trigger when's the right time? When is it the right time to kind of try to engage somebody with a chat?

Nick Chitty: Yeah, it's a great point and something that we're obviously constantly kind of assessing and reassessing. Frankly, every website is different. So, on a kind of mechanical level, we'll look at green analytics data and look at that route from start to finish. So, how does a converter typically behave on a website compared to someone who's leaving? Okay. And at what point through that funnel or that journey are people churning, they're experiencing friction, and how can we use chat to support them with that journey and ultimately convert them?

So, from a practical level, we've got some tools to stop people leaving, what we call exit intent. If someone goes to move the cursor up, we can hit them with a [00:08:00] message depending on what community or design they've viewed. Or for example, they're looking at form, right? Most markets, and Greg, you'll know this better than else, so much traffic is driven to those landing page for inquiry forms, but only a very small proportion actually convert into a lead.

So, how can we stop them doing that? We don't want to fire chat over a form and duplicate leads, but we really wanna stop those high-intent users from churning. So, can we fire chat at the optimal moment when someone's like to churn? Maybe they leave a digital cell number or a filled blank and then hit when the message is gonna resonate with them to take them offline ultimately.

Kevin Weitzel: So, you're saying that it's a lot more about the timing of it? Kinda like, the joke, the adage goes you know, the secret of comedy, timing. Dump it in there right away because it's not supposed to be in the proper time sequence. And I assume that that's basically what you're saying is that you can learn more from finding out the errors of the ways versus just saying, Hey, let's just slam 'em into this form.

Nick Chitty: Precisely that. So, yeah. You're spot on as well as timing, it's all about messaging. So, what we like [00:09:00] to say is we like to use chat to fire the right message to the right person at the right time. So, rather than generic greetings of, Hey, how can I help you? It's targeted to specific communities or specific points of friction they might be experiencing. Because ultimately that enhances the level of communication that we can have and conversation, but also makes it more useful for the consumer. No one wants to engage with a tool just because it's a conversion tool, right? They want to be able to use a tool like chat because they've got genuine questions that they need answering that are gonna help them inform their decision longer term.

Greg Bray: I think this is a really interesting idea, this idea of being able to look at a visitor to the website and try to understand how do we help them right in this moment. Okay, they're having trouble with the form. Or they're leaving, but they didn't go to the next step, so what did they not find that they were looking for, or what happened that maybe we can move them over that [00:10:00] hump? How much learning do you have to have on a particular client or website to be able to start to see those patterns? Or is it common across all clients where you can already know what to kind of look for?

Nick Chitty: I'd say that from working with this space we've built up quite a comprehensive data set of typically what works and what doesn't with regards to our triggers and tools. But naturally, as you say, traffic behaves differently on every site. So, not just the quality of traffic, but the navigation. How is the site laid out? Is it laid out in a coherent way to be able to support their journey? Are there actually gaps within the website that preventing people from goal completion?

So, in that sense, every website is different and we look to optimize triggers according to our clients' domains and according to that journey. But ultimately we use the insights that we've learned and combine them with specific client research as well.

Greg Bray: Would you say that there comes a point where it's like, Hey, company, we keep getting this same issue, this same question. We need to fix this on [00:11:00] the page instead of just using chat to solve the problem. Let's give 'em what they're asking for. Let's figure out what's missing. And how do you guys bring that view back to your clients so that they can improve it so that the chat may not get used as much because we've solved whatever roadblock was in the way?

Nick Chitty: It's a really kind of nuanced point, but one that we see quite often. So, as part of our process, we have a quality team that will review the conversations that our agents are having. If we see a common trend of questions that are being asked, either the answers within the website are not sufficient, or actually just not giving the consumer what they need. We then have that conversation with the client. Hey, you know, we're getting tons of questions around the nearest school or what other amenities are within this community. Maybe it's worth making this content, this copy more obvious within the actual site itself. Because it's likely if people are experiencing this through chat, they're also those that aren't actually engaging with the channel that are likewise having this issue.

Greg Bray: That's a great point. Sometimes we [00:12:00] just say, oh, well only five people ask that question, or whatever, but the reality is the people who are willing to ask the question are just a small sample of the folks who had the question but then didn't take the time to engage and ask it. Right. You have to believe there's a larger universe of those who had the same question but didn't take the time to reach out and ask about it. And so I think that's a great insight.

Do you find that today's consumers are more comfortable with a chat type of conversation versus a phone call or versus filling out a form? Is it something that is less threatening to them to share information in that format versus maybe some other ways that they could engage, some other channels that we were talking about earlier?

Nick Chitty: The key to this and the key to omnichannel communication is that these should be used in conjunction, in parallel one another. So, they're not a replacement. Having a phone line but not email address is not efficient. Having an inquiry form, but not a live chat is equally is not gonna cut it. So, when we introduce a [00:13:00] new channel like chat, we like to emphasize that any conversations and leads, a vast majority are gonna be incremental. So, these are additional people that we're helping convert through the channel.

Yeah, I think there's an element of chat being a way to engage with a brand without having to provide all of your credentials upfront. So, typically if someone engages with a form they tend to be pretty sure that they want to actually inquire about this specific plot, design, community. But actually, there are those on the fringe that are showing intent signals that are relevant, are interested, but have pertinent and relevant questions that they want answered and they don't necessarily want an ISA or an OSC to call them to respond to it. They might not be at that time, that process in their journey. There might be a little bit before that and that's a great opportunity to use something like chat to be able to support those.

Greg Bray: Today's savvy marketers know that home buyers want to engage on their terms and on their schedule. It is not just about having great website content, but it is more important than ever to also have every available home open and accessible when buyers want to visit and tour in person. Whether it's an inventory home or an unstaffed model, NterNow can increase your leads as much as five times by easily and securely extending the hours that your homes are open and available without a need to increase the size of your sales team.

Beyond just providing easy access, NterNow also seamlessly integrates with Smart Home Technology to provide an award-winning, self-guided tour experience. If your inventory homes are piling up, then it's time to see how NterNow can help you grow your new home sales. Don't wait. Reach out today. Be sure to ask about their special introductory offer and let them know you heard about it on The Home Builder Digital Marketing Podcast.

Learn more at nternow.com. That's N T E R N O W.com.

So, you deal with companies who have not yet implemented a tool that has, the power of what you have, obviously. So, [00:14:00] what types of mistakes have you seen these companies making that you, Hey, no guys, you need to stop doing it that way. Let us help you find a better way. What are some of those mistakes that you're trying to help them overcome?

Nick Chitty: Yeah, I think there are a ton. So, the default for a lot of the clients that we work with.

Kevin Weitzel: Sorry to laugh. I like how you go, oh, there's tons.

Nick Chitty: I'm sorry. I'm sorry. They're easy to make. Let's put it that way. I think that the default is, builders, go onto their neighbor's website, they see a new tool. They think that looks good, let's use it. And typically that results in them licensing software and then having an OSC or an ISA run that. So, what it looks like is the first few weeks they'll get engagement, they'll be super excited. These are new people we're contacting and this is really cool and interesting. But then after week three, week four, week five, reality takes over.

There are other priorities that they have and other work and resource that they need to commit to. So, what that typically leads to is poor response times, people waiting 2, 3, 4, 5, maybe 10 minutes for [00:15:00] response. Not being available at all, and also the hours of coverage, which they are able to respond within a reasonable manner. So, within their working hours, nine to five, nine to six, the chat widget only being available then, and then after hours, just going to a form fill, which is exactly the same as every other CTA on their website.

Greg Bray: I don't know, Kevin, have you ever engaged with chat on a website, not necessarily builder, but with anybody?

Kevin Weitzel: It's no secret. Nicholas, you don't know this, but let me tell you, I am not, it's not that I'm not tech-savvy. I understand technology and how it works. I am tech avert. I prefer the human connection. I prefer to go in and talk to a sales professional, have my questions answered. I prefer a live person talking versus chatbot. So, lemme tell you that I have gone online in a research mode, not in the home building industry, and researching products.

I'm not gonna mention the speaker brand, but it's a certain speaker brand cuz I'm into high-fi and into sound systems. I have never in my life, every time I've ever tried to use a chatbot had anything other [00:16:00] than extreme frustration. Because it always inevitably just points me to, not the answers, but to, Hey, let me get your name, let me get your email, let me get your phone number. So, I can plug it into the CRM so we can just blast you with some more emails on the subject that we don't even know what we're blasting you about. So, I would say that I've had a horrible experience.

However, on the flip side of that, the times where the chat has converted to a live human, whether it be textural or even a phone call, I've been elated with that. So, I think that when you said, and I'm actually gonna quote this when we post your episode.

Nick Chitty: Careful.

Kevin Weitzel: Humans are best placed with technology instead of just replacing humans with technology. It's that they're better placed with it, and I think it is. It's better to have that symbiosis of tying the human factor into the conveniences that technology gives us. So, Greg, the long answer is no, I've never had a good experience with digital chat. However, with human interface, I've [00:17:00] had outstanding response. So, there you go.

Greg Bray: I appreciate you giving us a long answer. Thank you. Thank you.

Kevin Weitzel: Yes.

Greg Bray: Nick, one of the things you said was about the expected response time. So, my personal experience with chatting, just again, in a variety of different personal interactions with companies I'm working with. When I go to chat, I have an expectation for a faster response than I do for when I send an email or fill out a form. I expect them to be sitting there waiting. You know, because hey it's the impression it gives, right? This person's just sitting around, when's Greg gonna fill out the, and start talking to me? And yet then you put something in and five minutes later it's I've forgotten what I even my issue was, you know, in five minutes. I've moved on to the next thing, right? So, this idea of manning the chat, so to speak, and having those people there. That's gotta be critical to success, isn't it, to have that team there?

Nick Chitty: Yeah, absolutely. So, we've done various studies, as you can imagine, given the data sets that we've got, where we can really get into granularity of the conversion and the [00:18:00] importance of things like timing and first response. So, we find if you don't engage with a user within the first 52 seconds, there or thereabouts, typically you'll see up to a 60% reduction in engagement. Flat out. So, that first response rate is supercritical.

Greg Bray: So, they just leave. Right? You're saying they just leave?

Nick Chitty: Completely leave. They'll just completely ignore the chat and get on with closing a browser or going somewhere else. So, that first response is critical. Then thereafter, people tend to give you a little bit more time. So, once they're engaged with a human, they understand that the reality is when you're speaking to a real person, they don't have everything at the forefront of their mind. Naturally, they have to think about responses. They have to understand the nature of your question and be able to provide value through the information. So, they're a little bit more forgiving as you get into the conversation. But certainly that first response rate really important as we've seen with our clients.

Greg Bray: All right. Now here's the question. I know some people are thinking, right? Well, at least one person. This sounds great, Nick, but how in the world can your people know my stuff well [00:19:00] enough to answer these questions if they're not working for me all day, every day?

Nick Chitty: Yeah. It's a completely valid question and I think, again, when we think about the nature of the businesses we're working with, they work hard to build their brands and to understand how they're perceived in the market and essentially how their clients want them to think of them as a builder and potential kind of homeowner.

So, I think the key for us is the differentiation between what we are and what we're not trying to be. So, we're not trying to replicate the knowledge or the value that an OSC or an ISA brings to the team. We're not claiming to be able to go into specific detail about the carpet in this particular design, or whatever that might be, valid questions people might have later down that journey.

Our job really is to practically engage and greet clients, answer basic critical questions, qualify them, and then convert them for that team. And the way we execute that is by preparing documents for our team, training documents that we put [00:20:00] together for our clients on behalf of our clients. Where we're pretty confident these questions are gonna be asked from our experience, but also given the nature of their traffic.

And it is an iterative process. So, naturally when you've got incentives around communities, anything like that, there is information that you're gonna want to have updated and we can do that. And that's the beauty of having the humans there because we can retrain them on that information. But I think the differentiation is important from the outset.

But then secondly, we spoke about tech and why tech is important and I think why SmartChat has been successful for the clients we're working with is that front-end identification piece. So, by asking chat at the optimal time, we can really reduce the possibility or probability of questions that like to be asked. So, naturally, if you land on a homepage and chat fire straight away, there are a thousand different things you might ask, or need to ask because you've literally just arrived, right? Like walking into a showroom or having a, whatever it might be. Whereas actually, as you get further down the funnel, the likelihood of [00:21:00] missing information is reduced. And therefore we can have better conversations, provide better answers and better responses, and make the whole conversation a lot more valuable.

Greg Bray: I think that's a great point we don't always think about. So, somebody has just started their journey on the website. And again, a lot of these chat tools, five, 10 seconds in, how can I help you pop up shows up, right? They haven't even had time to like read the content you've already put in front of 'em. And so if I'm coming to this website and I'm like, I'm looking for, do you have a four bedroom home in my area that I'm looking for, this thing pops up, I'm just gonna start asking the question to the person, and I haven't even taken the time to read the content that's there and let the website actually do its job of providing that, content.

So, in a way, by waiting, you optimize both opportunities, right? You let the website do some of its work, and then what the people do is the deeper questions, the harder, if you will, part of that process that keep 'em moving forward. So, I think [00:22:00] that's a great insight that you've brought there. And sorry if I'm slow picking up on it here, but that's really different than the traditional chat that just pops based on a timing in my opinion.

Nick Chitty: Absolutely. You're spot on. I'm glad I've managed to convey in a way that wasn't too jargony and too detailed.

Greg Bray: Well, Nick, I think this has been, you know, something that's different and unique the way you guys are doing that, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to talk to you today and learn a little bit more about it. Do you have any other, like big mistakes or gotchas that people need to watch out for if they haven't gone this route yet that they might be not really paying attention to?

Nick Chitty: Yeah. I guess taking a step back and thinking about why you want to incorporate chat as part of kind of process and the channel. Probably builders first need to think about their own values. So, understanding who they are and what they stand for. What their why is. And the reason I say that is consistency, the consistency of message [00:23:00] is super important. From the content, you publish on your website, from the newsletters you send through to live chat in this instance, to the OSC, to whoever it is in part of that journey. You want to have that consistent message. And I think with that consistency, you can build credibility and trust. So, I say before any of this, it's important for builders and our clients to understand how they want to be perceived and ultimately the message they want to convey to their prospective homeowners.

Greg Bray: You know, so often when we talk about builders selling, the successful ones recognize that they're not really selling something cuz if they put the customer in the wrong house, it's just not gonna work out. They're guides, they're advisors, and so what you're doing is you're bringing the opportunity to advise and guide to another level just while they're on the website. As opposed to later in that journey. I think that that's a real interesting insight that how do we guide them through this whole process.

Nick Chitty: Absolutely. Yeah. That's exactly what we're trying to do. We wanna be [00:24:00] valuable, we wanna be assistive, and ultimately we want to enhance that customer experience. That makes a difference further down the line. Believe me.

Kevin Weitzel: I just got one last question for you. It's definitely off-topic. I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna put it out there that this is for sure off-topic.

Nick Chitty: Go for it.

Kevin Weitzel: Your house in Greece, does it have a couch?

Nick Chitty: It has a couple. Yeah. I actually need to buy some more furniture.

Kevin Weitzel: Well, I got some bad news for you buddy, cuz I'm gonna bring a bottle of scotch and I'm gonna spend a week on that couch in Greece, whether you're there or not. All right? Just so you know, just giving you a heads-up.

Nick Chitty: Let's do it. Let's do it. I'd love that. Yeah, absolutely. You're more than welcome.

Greg Bray: Oh man. What are we gonna do with you, Kevin? What are we do? Well, Nick, in, in all seriousness, as we wrap up, do you have any last words of advice for our listeners today? Something that you wanna make sure they got out of our conversation?

Nick Chitty: Yeah. I guess the key from us is that buyers' preferences have changed, and digital marketing is the forefront of that. The way people were purchasing real estate has changed massively, and people increasingly [00:25:00] starting that journey online. And as a consequence, their demands and what they expect of a brand is also transformed. So, if you are not catering to the needs of those prospective buyers, others will. Whether that's via chat in this case, or the content and the value you're providing through nurture campaigns, whatever that might be. If you're not putting the right information in front of these guys, then someone else is gonna be able to fill that gap and ultimately capture their demand and prospective interest.

Greg Bray: No, I completely agree. It's totally changing and the sooner you can engage with them, the better, and keep that conversation going. So, this has been great information, Nick. We appreciate it. If somebody wants to learn more and connect with you, what's the best way for them to reach out?

Nick Chitty: So, you can always reach me on LinkedIn. I'm just simply Nick Chitty, C H I T T Y. Alternatively via email. So, nick@commversion.com or of course via the website. So, a little plug. We are running a two-week free trial of SmartChat. So, if anyone is interested, feel free to reach [00:26:00] out and we can talk you through that process there.

Greg Bray: Awesome. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for being with us, and a big thank you to our episode sponsor NterNow. Be sure to learn more at nternow.com. Thank you everybody for listening today to The Home Builder Digital Marketing podcast. I'm Greg Bray with Blue Tangerine.

Kevin Weitzel: And I'm Kevin Weitzel with OutHouse. Thank you.