Speed to lead for real estate teams: how Deskwoot connects to Follow Up Boss

Saturday, 2:14 pm. A buyer asks in your website chat: "Is 42 Maple Ave still available? Could we see it this weekend?" Zillow leads get an agent and an action plan. Hers never reaches Follow Up Boss, so your speed to lead routine never starts.

Here is what a chat or WhatsApp lead needs to start Lead Flow, and how Deskwoot sends it with the details for the first call.

What a slow first reply costs

How much the wait costs is an old argument, and the studies come to different numbers. One figure is enough here.

XANT, a sales software company, sent test leads through the web forms of 9,538 US companies. 47% never responded, and the companies that called back took a median of 3 hours 8 minutes for the first call (2014 Lead Response Report).

Closer to home, Follow Up Ace, which sells AI software for Follow Up Boss users, writes on its website that most agents average 30 to 60 minutes. It names no source, so treat that as a vendor's estimate.

Either way, the lead nobody answers costs the most. On a Follow Up Boss team, it is often one that never got into Follow Up Boss.

Where leads slip out before the clock starts

Portal leads and IDX registrations usually reach Follow Up Boss through their own connections. Everything else arrives wherever the customer happened to be:

• the chat on the team website, answered by whoever happens to be at a desk
• texts to the office number, or to an agent's own phone
• WhatsApp messages from buyers who prefer it
• emails to the info address or to the listing agent

Someone copies these into Follow Up Boss later, or doesn't.

Leads should arrive as events

When a tool passes leads on, the way it does so matters. The Follow Up Boss API documentation asks every integration to send leads as events and says plainly: "Please do not use POST /v1/people to send leads into FUB."

Creating a person directly skips the steps a new lead should trigger:

• the duplicate check
• the assignment through Lead Flow
• the agent alert
• the action plan

Check the Zap behind your website form

Zapier shows the same split. Its Follow Up Boss actions include "Create Contact Without Triggering Action Plans" and "New Inquiry or Website Event". Only the second one can start action plans for new leads.

If a Zap feeds your website form into Follow Up Boss today, open it and check which of the 2 it uses.

What a lead needs when it lands in Follow Up Boss

These 4 points apply whatever tool you use to get leads in.

1. The right event type. According to the events documentation, action plans start only for Registration, Seller Inquiry, Property Inquiry, General Inquiry and Visited Open House events. Automations start only for the first 4.
2. An email address or a phone number. Follow Up Boss matches people by phone number or email address. With one of them, a past client who texts from a known number lands on her existing record. Without either, there is nothing to match and nobody to call.
3. The customer's own words and the facts for the first call: which property, or what they are looking for, plus budget, timeframe and the times that suit for a showing. An agent who calls and opens with "So what were you looking for?" has lost the head start.
4. A source name you recognize in Lead Flow, so you decide on purpose which agent and which action plan these leads get.

The same documentation adds a trap for leads entered by hand. An event dated more than 1 day in the past counts as historical and starts no workflow, so never backdate a lead you enter late.

How Deskwoot connects to Follow Up Boss

Deskwoot, our shared inbox, puts website chat, WhatsApp, SMS and email in one place. Connected to Follow Up Boss, it sends each new conversation over as an event, so nobody has to copy chats into Follow Up Boss by hand.

The Follow Up Boss connection is in beta, so details can still change. The Follow Up Boss page sums up what it does, and the setup guide walks through every setting.

To connect, the account owner or an admin signs in to Follow Up Boss from Deskwoot's integration settings. Agent and lender logins are refused, since an agent login only sees its own leads.

New conversations become leads after 3 minutes

The switch "Send new conversations to Follow Up Boss" is on from the start. Each new conversation a customer starts then goes to Follow Up Boss as a lead, from every inbox except email inboxes, or only from the inboxes you pick. A few rules keep the junk out:

• Email inboxes stay out until you pick them, because they also collect newsletters and vendor mail. Pick the ones buyers and sellers write to.
• Conversations marked as spam, blocked contacts, group chats and automatic replies are skipped.
• A lead needs an email address or a phone number. WhatsApp and SMS bring the number with the first message. A website visitor often types neither, so that lead waits until they do, for up to 24 hours.

Deskwoot waits 3 minutes after the customer's first message before it sends. In that time Fynn, the AI agent in Deskwoot, can find out what the customer actually wants.

When the customer confirms the details before the lead goes out, Fynn's request takes its place, so the agent gets one lead with the whole request, not 2. Three minutes is well inside the first hour, and in the meantime Fynn or your team can already answer in the chat.

The lead arrives as an event with the source "Deskwoot" and the tag "Deskwoot" (you can rename both). Follow Up Boss matches it to an existing person by email or phone, and your Lead Flow assigns the agent as it does for any other source.

Fynn sends buy, sell, rent and showing requests as structured fields

When a customer wants to buy, sell, rent or see a property, Fynn asks in one message for whatever is missing:

• the property (address, listing link or MLS number) or the search (area, price range, bedrooms)
• the timeframe
• times for a showing
• a phone number or email, if the conversation has neither

Then he repeats what he noted and asks "Is that right?". Only after the customer's yes does he send it, as fields the agent can read at a glance.

Fynn tells the customer the team has the request and an agent will get back to them. He never confirms a showing, a price or availability, and he never names an agent.

If you want buyers to pick real viewing slots, that runs through your Outlook calendar instead, which we cover in our post on viewing slots.

Fynn also never reads Follow Up Boss data. He passes on what the customer wrote and nothing else, so a question like "Who is my agent?" goes to your team.

Your team sees the Follow Up Boss side next to the chat

Each conversation has a Follow Up Boss section with the person's stage, assigned agent, tags and last activity.

Say a text comes in: "Hi, it's Tom, we closed on Birch St last year, can you recommend a roofer?" With automatic sending on, Deskwoot passes it on after 3 minutes. Follow Up Boss matches Tom's number to his record, and the section shows him as a Past Client with his agent's name.

Whoever picks up the conversation knows who he is. Deskwoot keeps only the link to the Follow Up Boss person, and stage, agent and tags are read fresh when you open the conversation.

Notes and tasks go back to Follow Up Boss

• When you resolve a conversation, Deskwoot adds it to the person's timeline as a note (on from the start). It carries only the messages the customer saw, never your private notes.
• When Fynn hands a conversation to the team, Deskwoot can create a task in Follow Up Boss for the lead's agent, once you switch that on.
• Your team can also send a conversation to Follow Up Boss by hand, add a note, create a task, or link a different person if the match was wrong.

Set up Lead Flow before the first chat lead arrives

A chat lead is different from a portal lead in one way: the customer is often still talking to you when the lead lands. Plan for that.

Give the Deskwoot source its own rule

Set up Lead Flow for the Deskwoot source, and pick the agent or group and the action plan for these leads yourself.

Hold back the instant text

If your standard action plan texts every new lead within a minute, a buyer who is still chatting gets a text from another number asking how you can help.

For this source, start with a call task, or let the first automatic text wait until the next day. Keep the conversation going on the channel the customer picked.

Check consent before an action plan texts anyone

In the US, the Follow Up Boss acceptable use policy makes users "solely responsible" for the consents their messages need. It names the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, 47 U.S.C. § 227.

Someone who asked about a listing on WhatsApp has started a conversation with you. Whether that covers automated texts from an action plan is a question for your broker or attorney. This is general information, not legal advice.

Keep the Deskwoot source active

If the Deskwoot source is archived and ignored in Lead Flow, Follow Up Boss drops the lead (the events documentation describes this). Deskwoot then marks the lead as ignored in the conversation, so you can unarchive the source and send it again.

Test it with 5 leads in the first week

Use your own email addresses and phone numbers for these, because your action plans may text or email them.

Tests 1, 2 and 4 need Fynn, because he is the one who picks the event type and fills in the details.

1. A buyer asks for a showing on the website chat. In Follow Up Boss you should see a Property Inquiry with the preferred times, an assigned agent and the agent alert.
2. A seller writes on WhatsApp. Look for a Seller Inquiry with the address and timeframe.
3. A past client texts from a number that is already in Follow Up Boss. There should be no duplicate, and the Deskwoot section should show the existing stage and agent.
4. A renter emails one of the inboxes you switched on. Expect a General Inquiry with the search.
5. A website visitor chats without giving an email or phone number. Nothing should reach Follow Up Boss until they give one.

Then resolve one of the conversations and check that the chat shows up as a note on the person's timeline.

What it costs

• Connecting Follow Up Boss and everything your team does with it: every Deskwoot plan, the free Hacker plan included, at no extra charge.
• Fynn's part: the Startup plan or higher, from $4 per agent per month, or $3.20 per agent per month billed yearly. The 7 day trial includes it too.

The details are on our pricing page, and our page for real estate teams shows what else Fynn handles for agencies.

Your first test lead

In Deskwoot, open Settings > Integrations, click the Follow Up Boss card, then Connect Follow Up Boss, and sign in as the account owner or an admin.

Click Save under "What Fynn does with Follow Up Boss" once, so Fynn starts passing on requests. Then run the 5 test leads above before the first real buyer writes.

A new workspace starts with a 7 day trial of Enterprise, without a card, for up to 30 seats including yours. After the trial you pick a paid plan or stay on the free Hacker plan, where the Follow Up Boss connection keeps working.