AI has been holding our calendar and phone system hostage since May, and it’s creating a few “wins” and a few “won’ts” for our team. Long story short, our corporate team added several AI apps to our workflow via an integration to our website and landline phone system to help us capture more leads.
Since our corporate team integrated the tools into our CRM and website, leads, prospects and data are automatically added to our calendars — without our permission. I’ve had to block out time on my calendar to show the robot that, no, I’m not coming in to do a late-night showing.
The future is here, and unless you are an independent entity, you will likely be using the AI tools your brand chooses, whether you like it or not.
Handing the reins of lead capture and client communication to a shiny new AI assistant may feel like the perfect superhero answer to an overloaded schedule, but “hiring” your AI team member doesn’t ensure that you won’t add more work to your plate in the long run.
In this article, I will share the wins and the won’ts of how our team benefits (and also bombs out) with our AI tools. These observations are universal in that I have had personal discussions with other agents and teams using a variety of AI tools, and their experiences seem to match this evolving part of adapting to AI culture.
Oh, the calendar
Desk duty has been both a blessing and a curse for real estate agents since the mid-1900s. Some members of your team will beg for it, others will believe it’s a waste of their time and would rather walk the Orgon Trail and get dysentery.
The reality is that with most things, desk duty is somewhere in between for sales professionals. This is where AI comes in. AI is always happy to work desk duty and answer the phone, reply to questions online and schedule appointments, but your team members may struggle with this and struggle to work with AI.
Wins
- We like the ease of auto appointments and follow-ups.
- We feel like the appointments are clearly connected in our calendar to the CRM.
Won’ts
- The AI won’t understand how long various types of appointments can take.
- The AI won’t account for lunch, bathroom breaks and pop-up appointments.
Having a plan for handling clients that AI captures is just like handling a physical walk-in. Your team needs to know how to help clients both digitally and physically, without struggle and without having to stress out about what to do.
If you don’t provide this map, they won’t be successful. Meaning, it’s your job as a broker or team leader to give them the soft skills they need to be successful with this “great AI leads” technology you have invested in for them.
What your team will need to know
- How the AI is working and where to find a log of what it has been up to
- How to create and reschedule appointments on a digital calendar
- That they must read and respond to emails within 24-48 hours to ensure they are not missing time-sensitive inquiries that could be counted as “leads”
- How to help a client who schedules an appointment that they cannot cover
They’ll also need regular check-ins with management to ensure a plan is in place for each lead and that the team is maintaining effective communication. These interactions often get lost in the shuffle.
Not all of your team members will embrace AI
Real estate is strange in that it is a mixture of individuals of all ages, but the majority of folks in the arena are embracing a second or third career, and they are over 50. The use of any technology is an investment of time for any sales professional, but new agents will need help building a foundation.
Consumers are the same. For some, it will be the “win” to capture the lead. For others, it will be Kryptonite for the entire deal.
Wins
- The AI will help pull in more leads and appointments into the CRM.
- The AI can be integrated with marketing campaigns. (This tech is not really new; it’s been developing in real estate as “smart analytics” for almost a decade.)
- The AI helps weaker team members build a structured pipeline.
Won’ts
- AI formats do not register with all processing styles and sometimes carry barriers because of what I like to call implied intuition. That means the creators believe it’s intuitive and training is minimal, and it doesn’t account for microworkers who need different prompts to be successful.
- AI integrations sometimes are not multidirectional, meaning their integrations may only send an “update” to other apps once a day and not real-time updates in different areas your team needs. This is often an issue that corporate “big picture” stakeholders overlook, but actual daily users discover when workflow is interrupted.
If you have agents on your team who struggle with social media, calendars and email management, AI is going to create even more chaos for them right off the bat. As a leader, you have to take time to invest in your team members to ensure they understand your expectations and the capabilities of AI systems.
Embracing AI tech tools but not training your team members on how to use them is essentially gambling with customer service.
AI that is ‘you’
We are currently using some concurrent AI tools that text clients and engage in conversations for us. This can be confusing for us and our clients because their responses are going into multiple locations, and they may be having real-time conversations with “us,” while at the same time, we are busy living life, helping other clients or even sleeping.
Win
- Saves time creating content
Won’t
- Sometimes my twin makes even more work or is following a script that I didn’t see first.
- With too many notifications, getting to inbox zero is a fever dream at this point.
- Clients have a hard time remembering what I said or what the robot said in texting chains.
We have handled this in two ways. First, if the client is responding, we immediately turn off the campaign and switch it over to a “real” conversation on our phones that we can manage. We tell clients that we do use AI tools and that if they are unsure whether they are talking to a robot or us, then please call us and leave a message.
24-7 admin
AI can schedule appointments, answer questions, nurture leads and do so many incredible things. However, it still cannot read context, understand emotions and pick up on emotional tones in conversations like your team members can in real time.
Win
- Clients can always get FAQs and basic communication.
Won’t
- The AI struggles with recognizing spam, prospects and vendors, and it creates too many duplicates that we have to sort through. In other words, if a prospect is using a different phone number or email, the AI won’t necessarily know it’s not a new person.
I have found that AI has no problem scheduling back-to-back appointments for me (Yay!), but it doesn’t know that the appointments need driving time calculated in, and I have to reschedule (Boo!).
I have found that AI has sufficient conversations on the phone with our clients, but it doesn’t know how to redirect folks who are asking questions it does not understand. It further frustrates a customer who is already frustrated that they cannot get a “real human” on the phone to help them.
Finally, we have had tremendous success with client interaction on some of our AI-driven social media ads, but the “leads” are still not qualified, and they feel misled because AI had hyped them up that we can help them.
Communication will always be a human problem to solve
Everyone communicates differently. Asking AI to follow the same “formula” or “prompt” for general customer service will work some of the time, but from personal experience, it still feels clunky. It helps teams manage a heavy workload, address around-the-clock inquiries and data entry, but your team members need to know what it’s up to. It’s like telling your team member to meet clients at a home to show it, but they have no map to get there.
Make sure to create an AI success map for your team members with the tools that your office chooses to use, and don’t throw your team members into the deep end without a life preserver. It creates a bad first impression with clients, frustration with agents who have a low tech threshold and, often, creates a heavier workload for your real admin during working hours as they try to sort out precisely what AI told everyone was going to happen.
It requires close monitoring and human oversight so that if surprise appointments are made at the last minute, someone can catch that and pick up the phone to make sure someone is available to handle it. AI technology is fantastic in many ways and frustrating in others, but you and your team will still have to adapt to the work.
As the old saying goes, you know what happens when you make assumptions. In other words, stay checked in to get some wins with your team when using AI, but beware letting it drive customer interactions and capture on autopilot.
This article was updated Sept. 30, 2025.
The future is here — and it’s powered by AI. October is Artificial Intelligence Month at Inman. We’ll dive into how agents, brokerages and startups are harnessing AI to reimagine real estate, and we’ll honor the trailblazers leading the way with Inman AI Awards.
Rachael Hite is a senior housing counselor, writer, and thought leader in real estate and aging. Follow her work on Instagram and LinkedIn.
