SUGGESTIONS Real Estate call capture solution for Asterisk

[sidcam]

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Newbie here.

I own a small (currently under 5 people) U.S.-based residential real estate brokerage.

A long-time part of our business has been a 1-800 number call capture system which is being discontinued as of June. Was wondering if there was an Asterisk add-on solution that can replace this (free or paid)?

The workflow of the call capture system is this:

A home's ads and lawn signs have a 1-800 number that offers prospects the ability to call a 24/7 recorded hotline where they can dial a unique-to-the-home three digit extension to find out it's current pricing and availability (as well as be connected to a human).

After playing the home's recorded message there are options to play the recording again, be connected to a human, etc but most people simply hang up.

Once the call has been disconnected the system immediately sends an email and text message to an agent letting them know the prospect's phone number and the time they called, extension they called on along with details of the extension's home- address, price, MLS number, etc.

The agent then places a return call to see if the prospect got all of their questions answered about the home.

The system has a web-based backend where extensions are managed as well as an area where you set up times for call forwarding, who gets follow up emails/texts, etc.

The system also mirrors the extensions to five different numbers for the purpose of tracking callers to advertising (i.e. extension 125 will also play on 225, 325, 425 and 525 so I know callers to 125 came from a lawn sign, 225 came from Craigslist, etc).

Thanks in advance for any feedback on possible solutions to replace this.

 

[atsak]

Ya, you could do this with Asterisk (PIAF or vanilla) but there'd be custom involved in the entire solution . .​

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There's no problem handling the inbound call and directing it to different announcements etc as you outlined; that wokrs out of the box.​

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The emailing of the call log, property name etc, are all the custom programming.​

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Someone here might have the chops to do this otherwise probably off to Freelancer.com or Elance.com with you. I'd expect a mid 4 figure number for this myself.​

 

[sidcam]

Thanks so much for the reply. It helps me establish a budget for the project if I continue to strike out finding something that already exists.

 

[discipulus]

I asked one of our team members who specializes in Asterisk, and he said the easiest way would be to create an announcement only voicemail box for each extension you want dialed, and then set an email to be sent each time a call comes in to that voicemail. He also said that all of this should be easily configurable with a default installation of Asterisk and FreePBX.

 

[atsak]

Once the call has been disconnected the system immediately sends an email and text message to an agent letting them know the prospect's phone number and the time they called, extension they called on along with details of the extension's home- address, price, MLS number, etc.

The problem is the extra information for the extension . . . that is the difficult part to do out of the box. Having an extension called the property address would be fine (in the name field).

 

[sidcam]

Awesome!

It might not be as full-featured as I'd like but that DOES sound like it would work as a short-term solution out-of-the-box. Replacing this service wasn't even remotely on my radar screen (or in my budget) a few weeks ago and now I have 60 days to be cut over to something new.

It has also since occured to me that instead of trying to custom build something what I should really be doing is trying to get the call log data into a CRM's lead drip system and letting it manage much of the process. My big project right now is converting to an online CRM (fork of Sugar called SuiteCRM) and I love the idea of integrating the two platforms better.

 

[sidcam]

The other reality is that "good enough" might just be good enough. Smartphones have really reduced the system's call volume so it's just not as important as it used to be.

Have even been thinking about trying out a text marketing system as a potential replacement.

 

[discipulus]

Asterisk has some good SMS modules ;-)

Personally, I'd probably set the name of the mailbox to the MLS # with a dash ( - ) and then the name of the lead source. Then the agent can lookup the MLS number, and then do the follow-up phone call.