Leaving an evening enquiry unanswered until the sales office opens is an operational problem. Answering it with an outdated price creates another one. Buying a WhatsApp advisor should be about accurate information, a usable enquiry record and a clear route to the right person, as well as speed. Give every supplier the same sample development and ask these questions. That makes their working methods comparable, beyond the polish of a presentation.
1. Where do prices and unit details come from at the moment of reply?
Uploading a PDF and connecting to current inventory are different scopes of work. Ask to see the source for official prices, currency, unit availability and target completion dates. Establish who updates it, when changes become available and how an incorrect update is reversed. Mark a unit as sold, then ask about it again in the conversation. A successful answer must stop using information that is no longer valid, as well as quote the correct number.
If the system uses previously retrieved data during an outage, agree how old that data may be and how the limitation is explained to the visitor. When the source cannot be read, saying that the information is unavailable should be an acceptance requirement.
2. What happens with unknown information, negotiation and requests for guarantees?
Bring difficult questions to the demonstration. Ask about an undecided maintenance charge, a special discount, a guaranteed completion date and an area measurement absent from the records. Filling a missing field with a convincing sentence creates a sales risk. Ask the supplier to specify which subjects the advisor can answer, which require a direct reference to recorded information and which must be handed to a person. Include those boundaries in the proposal.
One correct response is insufficient. Repeat the request using different wording, such as 'your final price' and 'a management discount'. The boundary should survive the change in phrasing.
3. What does a human handover become inside the sales team?
Behind 'our team will call you' there should be an enquiry with an assigned owner. It should contain the visitor's preferences, contact details, outstanding question and reason for escalation. Agree responsibility during and outside office hours, the expected response time and who receives an unanswered enquiry next. Software does not provide these service levels by itself; they must fit the sales team's staffing and working plan.
The person making the call should have a concise conversation summary. If the visitor must answer every question again, the automation has moved the work to another screen rather than completing the handover.
4. How is the introducing broker recorded?
Will attribution follow the first contact or the last? What happens when a link is forwarded, the buyer returns on another device or an existing enquiry already exists? There is no single correct commercial rule for every development. What matters is that the chosen rule is visible and consistently applied. Inspect a sample record showing the source link, timestamp and associated broker.
An attribution record is not perfect identification across devices or an automatic commission decision. Situations the software cannot observe should be explicit in the report. Agree a separate process for resolving commercial disputes.
5. Which personal details are actually necessary?
List the information needed for the first conversation. Asking for an identity document or a detailed financial file can exceed what is needed to return an initial property enquiry. Explain clearly why contact details are requested. The supplier should identify who can access the record, which services process it, how long it is kept and who handles a deletion request.
Use fictional customer information in the demonstration. If several developments share a system, ask for a test showing that a user role for one project cannot access another. Review the applicable legal documents and the actual workflow together with your own adviser.
6. Who owns each part of daily operation?
Work continues after installation. Prices change, staff leave and connections fail. A proposal saying 'support included' does not establish who owns these events. Fill in the following table with named responsibilities, access rights, response expectations and the evidence each person must provide.
| Task | Owner to identify | Evidence to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Price and inventory updates | The development's authorised data owner | Update time and approval record |
| An unanswered enquiry | The assigned sales team member | Follow-up status and handover note |
| Technical interruption | The supplier's support owner | Incident record and recovery plan |
| Accounts and service exit | The project owner and supplier | Access, export and handover checklist |
Also establish ownership of the WhatsApp connection and the accounts being used. The data and export format available if you leave the supplier should be part of the agreement from the outset.
7. What enquiry volume underpins the total monthly cost?
Separate implementation, software subscription, infrastructure, model usage, messaging service, integration and support charges. Request both a quiet-month and a busy-month estimate, stating the assumed conversation count, average length and included usage. Distinguish current platform charges and conditions from the supplier's own fees. If the price is described as fixed, specify which components remain fixed.
Ask in advance about additional developments, languages, data preparation and reporting. Name the person who warns you about rising usage and agree a spending limit. Two proposals only become comparable when they use the same volume assumptions.
8. Which tests determine acceptance?
Schedule a short acceptance session using your sample project data. Replace 'it sounds natural' with observable results. Write down the expected response, the record that should be created and the person approving each test before the session begins.
- Does an updated price or sold unit appear correctly?
- Are unknown information and discount requests escalated without guesses?
- Does a repeated incoming message create a duplicate enquiry?
- Does broker attribution follow the agreed rule?
- Does the enquiry reach its assigned salesperson?
- Do the same boundaries hold in the languages you need?
You can apply these questions to the data, handover and broker-attribution approach described on our Estate Pilot page. Bring a sample price list and three difficult customer questions to the discussion. We can use them to establish the scope, limitations and acceptance criteria together.