Buckle up, friends. This is the most anticipated Pocket feature release since we built the app back in 2017. It’s going to make a big difference to your Saturdays. Until now, you’ve been able to check in attendees, automatically send attendees brochures about the listing, record feedback and follow-up attendees in bulk through Pocket. It’s proved to be a big time saver, especially compared to the old school pen and paper method. However, there were a few gaps.
Did you stop using Pocket?
Some of our users told us that Pocket’s Open Homes feature was a bit too clunky and required a few too many taps to get things done quickly – which is a necessity at open homes. You’re flat out welcoming attendees, fielding questions and separating the stickybeak neighbours from the hot leads. Well, we’ve heard your grievances and we agree. With this feature update, we’ve removed all the speed bumps so you can add, manage and contact attendees faster than ever.
Get ready for a more streamlined Saturday
With this feature update, we’ve made it so you can do more in less taps - freeing up your hands so you can spend more time engaging with people. You can now:
View a thorough past attendance history
Immediately after you add an attendee, you can view a list of all the open homes they’ve visited across your office’s database. This gives you context on the sorts of homes they’re interested in - a great conversation starter! We’ve also added the number of times an attendee has visited the listing, to help you spot hot potential buyers amongst those visiting for the first time.
Easily update attendee details
If you want to “reuse” an existing contact (perhaps update a phone number or email address, for example), you simply need to select the contact and tap edit contact details.
Follow up all attendees in one fell swoop
We’ve introduced a new See All Attendees for Listing view, which shows you everyone who has inspected a particular listing at any open home or private inspection. Previously, you were only able to see a list of attendees for one specific event. From this new view, you can send a bulk email or SMS to all of those attendees - handy if you want to communicate a price drop or last open home before an auction, for example.
Send documents more smoothly
We’ve developed a new Send Documents workflow so you can send documents to attendees in as few as two taps. This is a much faster option to the standard Pocket Send Email flow. The email in this workflow automatically attaches all documents uploaded to a listing and set as public, but you can also opt to send private documents as well.
See which contacts belong to you
There’s now a clear distinction between My Contacts and Other People’s Contacts when searching through existing contacts to add. This is very useful for closed offices, where they may be multiple contact records for the one John Smith.
See at-a-glance attendance stats
We’ve introduced a new Summary tab on the open home record. Tap it to see a visual breakdown of attendees, organised by interest level. You’re also now be able to see historical numbers across all events for a specific listing.
In general, we’ve cleaned up the Open Home area of Pocket. For example, the Add Attendee button has been moved up higher on the screen, so you don’t need to scroll to tap it. Jump in to the app and see for yourself! For details on exactly how it works, you can read our Help articles or watch the new Open Homes video on the LMS, Rex University.
A huge amount of user research has gone into it
Getting the functionality and design right required us to get into the mindset of an agent at a busy open home. So, before we even started building anything, our user experience team collected feedback from dozens of agencies. We used that insight to redesign the Open Home feature so that the functionality you use most is front and centre and the step-throughs mirror your workflows. Then, we tested it. For the last few weeks, a small group of Rex users have been trialling the new functionality at their open homes and providing us with meaningful feedback. This helps us to identify improvements and iron out any kinks before we release it to the entire user base.
Together, Pocket + Rex = a central point of truth for your contacts
If you’ve been using another app to run your open homes, now’s the time to make the switch. Pocket automatically syncs with Rex, so all your attendee information is available in your database for when you return to the office. And it’s free for all Rex users! Thank you to everyone who has submitted suggestions to Uservoice or been a part of the testing process. You input has been invaluable!
