A real estate agent: one instruction instead of four systems

The job

Every new lead went into her phone contacts, her email, a follow-up system and a transaction system, by hand. Past clients had no closing dates, so the anniversary messages never went out. Leads from ads got a vendor's generic 30-day emails.

What I built

• An AI assistant on her own computer, with drafts in her own voice.
• A helper for her follow-up system that cannot delete anything and shows what it will change before it changes it.
• A contacts tool that can only add, never remove.
• Tested live before handover, including four rounds of deliberately trying to break it.

What changed

On her first day working with it on her own, she:

• Filled in closing dates for more than 30 past clients, so their anniversary messages now go out.
• Replaced the generic 30-day emails with a 7-email series over about 10 weeks, written in her voice, and moved nearly 50 ad leads onto it.
• Entered a new listing straight from the signed document, and had drafts ready for her three warmest leads.

Now one line puts a new client into her follow-up system and her contacts at once.

What stayed in human hands

She did the work. She made every change in her own systems, and nothing can be deleted by the assistant.

Honest limits

Real estate is not one of the industries I focus on, but the pattern is the same one every practice has: the same information typed into several places. I have not timed her tasks yet, so I am not claiming hours saved.

Written by Devan Borsboom. Client names and identifying details (city, team size and anything specific enough to place them) are left out on purpose.