The Challenge
Renting apartments in New York City is competitive. When Willow Tree Realty pushes a listing live, the team is instantly swamped by hundreds of calls, texts and Zillow® messages within hours.
“We’d log on at 8 a.m. to 250 missed messages,” recalls Kyle Ostroff, Head of Sales at Willow Tree. “Our team worked flat‑out but still couldn’t keep up.”
Their reps managed to reach about 30 % of prospects, while everyone else slipped away to competitors. Even when the team did connect, they spent precious time collecting basic data—time they could be using to sell.
“When someone inquires about a listing, you have a two-hour window—if we don’t catch them in that timeframe, they’ll stop responding and move on.”
The Solution
SalesAPE configured a custom AI Sales Agent that mirrors Willow Tree’s best rep—same friendly tone, same qualifying script:
- Integration with Follow Up Boss CRM to push conversation summaries and critical data points (credit score, household income, voucher status, etc.) into each contact record.
- Multi‑channel hand‑off across text, email and listing‑portal chat so renters can answer on their terms.
- 24‑hour smart follow‑up that automatically pings silent prospects, surfacing late responders the human team previously missed.
- Human-in-the-loop escalation rules which flag edge‑cases—e.g., renters unwilling to text sensitive info—for a quick human callback.
- Deliver hot leads and quietly closes the loop with those who don’t qualify.
The Results
- Lead coverage tripled – from ~30 % to virtually 100 % of inbound conversations handled.
- Call‑handling time halved – human follow‑ups now average 3 minutes instead of up to six, with key information captured in advance
- Inventory turnover accelerated, with units being rented 30 days faster on average
- Resources reallocated from followup to to outbound landlord acquisition, fuelling inventory growth.
Resources reallocated from followup to to outbound landlord acquisition, fuelling inventory growth.
