“In the world of real estate, it’s really hard to shut off because people text you and just assume that you can answer at two o’clock in the morning,” says Jessica Hubbard, CEO of Hubbard Realty Group.
OpenPhone ensures her team of real estate agents has more work-life balance. Here’s how:
Ramping up the team
Hubbard Realty Group started off by moving their operations team onto OpenPhone, where Jessica and her colleagues experimented with the platform to ensure it met their needs. Once her team realized OpenPhone was the perfect fit for their brokerage, they introduced it to their agents — and haven’t looked back since.
Hubbard Realty Group has numbers for each agent, their main office, and a line for listings. They’ve also since expanded to Kansas City and were able to easily add an 816 number so that clients there recognize the area code. Using OpenPhone, Hubbard Realty Group can quickly sign up for more numbers as they expand to additional markets.
As Hubbard Realty Group grows, Jessica knows how important it is to be able to have multiple phone lines and the ability to share access to them.
Using OpenPhone, Jessica can easily assign multiple teammates to phone numbers as needed, ensuring that clients are never waiting long.
“We have multiple people on the office line who can answer at any time,” says Jessica. “On my end, I can look at it and say, ‘Oh, Tiffany said this to that client, and then Clint followed up with this, and then Tali followed up with that information.’ From the client’s end, it looks like the same person is responding. On the client side, it looks seamless.”
OpenPhone’s shared numbers allow Hubbard Realty Group to split the work of answering inquiries or taking over a colleague’s number while they’re on vacation.
When team members need to understand what communication has taken place with a client, all they need to do is look at a client’s contact history or a phone line’s history in OpenPhone. Contacts can be easily shared across users. And call recordings, voicemails, and text messages are all saved in one place.
Setting clear boundaries
With OpenPhone, Hubbard Realty Group’s agents can set custom business hours for their work numbers. Once business hours are over, notifications are silenced and voicemails are saved within OpenPhone, so they can be reviewed when the team returns to work.
OpenPhone’s auto-reply feature also lets agents get back to clients immediately, even when they’re far from their phones or sound asleep. Agents can set up unique auto-replies for different events, such as receiving a call, a text, or a voicemail outside of business hours. That way, clients know exactly when they can expect a response, and agents can actually relax and unwind after work.
“OpenPhone is definitely saving us time and the work-life balance is absolutely huge for us,” says Jessica.
The best part of business hours and auto-replies, according to Jessica, is that agents can set it and forget it. “We love the fact that we can set our schedules and we don’t have to remember to put our phones on out-of-office every day,” she says. “I haven’t found that on any other provider.”
Bottom line
OpenPhone allows Hubbard Realty Group to provide streamlined service to its clients across multiple cities, all while providing agents with the flexibility they need to feel supported and engaged long-term.
If you’re looking to give your team more balance and have clearer oversight into the conversations your agents are having, sign up for a free, seven-day trial of OpenPhone of today
