An Edinburgh Lettings Agent Reduced No Show Appointments By -77%

The Challenge

An independent Edinburgh based property lettings agent with an on average 15-20 properties for rent within the Edinburgh and surrounding area had a challenge managing volumes of viewing appointments, prospective leads and handling phone calls with a limited amount of admin resource. With only a handful of employees available to handle rental viewings - the team often had issues with calendar availability, and in the worst cases prospective tenants that never turned up to viewings wasted a significant amount of time. Estimates suggested that the team were spending around 20 hours per week on admin - between chasing tenant viewings, booking viewings into the calendar, answering calls about properties, and a further 10 average weekly hours wasted due to no-show appointments or last minute cancellations.

flowio were engaged as a trusted AI growth partner to develop several automated solutions including an AI voice agent, AI SMS integrations and automated business workflows to help the team reduce manual call handling, admin and operational time.

From the company: "We knew something had to change. As a relatively small independent agent, we have a limited team to handle a high volume of calls and emails every day. We had no cover during weekends or evenings, which meant chasing calls, emails and admin during the day. "

Key Pain Points

• Time Efficiency: 20+ hours per week wasted on chasing low-quality leads within admin team
• No-Show Appointments: Over 10 hours on average wasted every week on no show appointments incl. travel
• Lead Qualification: Inconsistent qualification of prospective tenants leading to poor time efficiency

The Solution

Contact Submission Validation

flowio developed an inbound lead qualification system combined with SMS notification and an AI receptionist voice agent. The system was simple - whenever a form enquiry arrived through an advertised rental property on their website, the submission was routed through a custom built n8n automation which validated all contact details. The automation also attempts to enrich the contact submission with any publicly available data - e.g. employment details. This n8n workflow automatically improved lead quality with custom phone number and email validation. Invalid mobiles or emails were routed to another workflow to attempt to validate or find the correct details using an API service - if they can't be validated then they didn't hit the admin team.

Voice Agent Response

Once validated, the next n8n automation workflow instantly replies to the user's mobile number with an SMS message utilising the Twilio API advising that an agent will call them within 5 minutes to discuss their requirements. After a 5 minute wait the automation will call the Elevenlabs API voice agent to make the phone call to the user. Before the user even answers the call an n8n webhook is called to extract the contact details from their CRM system - detect if the user is an existing client or not and alter the messages for the phone call (e.g. addressing them by their name and enquiry type).

The Elevenlabs AI voice agent calls the user, and runs through a quick series of qualification questions such as "Are you in full-time employment?", "What is your timescale to move in?", "What is your annual salary?" etc. If a user is qualified - then the voice agent will ask which properties they are interested in viewing.

Knowledge Base

The AI voice agent has access to a live RAG-based knowledge base of rental properties that are currently on the market from the company. The user can ask the agent to provide details of properties in certain postcode areas, by number of rooms, by amenities - with the agent able to respond instantly with a short list of properties based on the search results. The user can then be provided with as much detail as they want about specific properties. This is all achieved through an in-call webhook tool within n8n. The Elevenlabs voice agent calls the tool mid-call giving it the ability to search a live database of properties by postcode, bedrooms, rental price, deposit and other criteria.

Booking Viewings

The user can book a viewing directly over the phone with the agent for a specific property. When requested, the agent will use another in-call tool built in n8n that uses the Google Calendar API to lookup viewing slot availability over the next 10 days, or provide information on any open viewings coming up for that property. The agent will provide the next available viewing slot based on the calendar and user preference (e.g. evenings or mornings). Once the user confirms the agent books directly into Google Calendar and alerts the team.

Post-Call & Follow Ups

Once the user is booked in for a viewing they enter a sequence, firstly alerting the team of a new viewing and a task to manually follow up. Second, they enter a SMS session queue which will send a viewing reminder 1 day before the date, and again 1 hour before with a simple "Are you attending your viewing at 10am today? YES/NO".

To date this has reduced the number of users who had booked in for a viewing but ended up never actually showing up by over two thirds. Prospective tenants may not show up for a number of reasons, some may be time-wasters, but in a fast-moving rental market in Edinburgh it is more than likely that some already found a property and never bothered to inform the letting agency.

Implementation Timeline

From initial consultation to full deployment, the entire implementation took just 4 weeks, with zero downtime and no disruption to their daily operations.

What Made This Different

Unlike an off-the-shelf voice agent product, flowio developed a bespoke lead flow and voice system for the fast-moving property rental market in Edinburgh that tackled multiple distinct business challenges at the same time. The system was able to verify, and validate contact details within the call saving time chasing non-qualified leads, and save the admin team time handling endless calls.

Intelligent Escalation

The system knows exactly when to escalate to a human agent, and can do this via SIP trunk based routing. Existing tenants, Emergency maintenance, legal queries, and complex disputes are instantly routed to the right team member within the office with full context - no repetition needed. If the call is out of hours, the agent knows to take a callback message, and the office team is provided with an alert system to call the user back when the office opens.

Multi-Property Intelligence

With an ever changing inventory of rental properties - the agent knows exactly what properties the company has to offer via a real-time RAG-based knowledge base lookup consisting of a live property database - giving the user the ability to search for a property that suits their budget, area and requirements - all over the phone. The agent has the ability to send a direct URL via SMS to the caller so that they can view the property online during the call.

Appointment Reminder Automation

Cutting out the manual task of sending appointment reminders to each booked-in lead, we built a system that sends out automated SMS and email reminders to the prospective tenant 4 days / 1 day and 1 hour before the viewing is to take place. These messages allow the user to confirm their attendance, or reschedule the viewing directly, or cancel the appointment alltogether. This cuts out the need for office staff to chase leads to confirm their attendance, and in the worst cases avoids time-wasted by no-shows and last-minute cancellations.