Smith.ai is built around intake. A leasing sign is built around one property.
Smith.ai grew up serving law firms, and it shows in the best way. The product assumes a caller is a potential client entering a defined intake process, and it is built to run that process consistently, log it, and push it into a CRM.
That assumption is the fit test. If every person calling your number is the same kind of person going into the same funnel, intake automation is exactly right. A number on a leasing panel breaks the assumption on the first afternoon.
Four callers, one number
A listing line takes calls from a prospective tenant who saw the sign, a broker representing somebody, a vendor selling something to the brokerage, and a person who wants the dry cleaner that used to be in suite B. Only the first two are worth a callback, and they need different questions. A tenant gets asked about use, size, and timing. A broker gets asked who they represent.
An intake flow built for one caller type either asks a tenant broker questions or asks a broker tenant questions. Both make the transcript worse.
The property is the missing variable
Intake products are configured per client. That is the right granularity for a firm and the wrong one for a brokerage, because a brokerage's callers are not asking about the brokerage. They are asking about 5801 Lincoln. Whether the 2,660 has a grease interceptor, whether the rate is negotiable, and whether the owner will take a vape shop are property facts, and they change per assignment and per quarter.
You can approximate that by writing a very long intake script that covers every property you represent. It works until you take on the fifth one.
What to compare on
- Can the thing answering know which property is being asked about, without the caller saying an address?
- Can it be told something new about that property and have it live on the next call, not the next quarter?
- Does it decide what not to forward, or does every call become a message?
- Does the price move when you take a listing on and drop when it leases?
Smith.ai answers the second one well and the rest are a stretch, because the product was never trying to solve them. A line that belongs to one listing answers all four by construction, which is less a feature than an admission that it does one narrow job.
$99/mo per listing. Cancel when it leases.
Questions brokers ask
Does Smith.ai work for leasing calls?
It works exactly as designed when every caller is the same kind of person entering the same funnel, which is how it grew up serving law firms. A number on a leasing panel does not produce one caller type.
Why does caller variety break an intake flow?
A listing line takes calls from a prospective tenant who saw the sign, a broker representing somebody, a vendor selling something to the brokerage, and a person looking for the dry cleaner that used to be there. An intake flow built for one caller type ends up asking a tenant broker questions, or asking a broker tenant questions. Both make the transcript worse.
What should I compare an intake service on?
Two things: whether it knows the specific property rather than your business, and whether it stops billing the day the space leases.