How a Sydney property management firm stopped losing leads in their inbox

The problem

The firm was receiving around 35 new rental enquiries per week. Each one came through a different channel, in a different format, with different information. Someone had to check all four inboxes, figure out which property the person was enquiring about, copy their contact details into the CRM, assign it to the right property manager, and send a reply.

At roughly 7 minutes per lead, that was around 4 hours per week of admin work — carried out by the same property managers who cost $41/hour and should have been talking to landlords, not copying contact details. At that rate, manual lead handling was costing the firm roughly $660/month.

Because this work happened during the day alongside everything else, the average time from enquiry to first response was 4 hours. For enquiries that arrived after 5pm, it was the next morning. They tracked two confirmed losses to competitors during the six months before we started — both mentioned response speed.

What we built

A system that captures every enquiry the moment it arrives — from REA, Domain, the website, or Facebook — and creates a complete lead record in their CRM automatically. It links the correct property, fills in the enquirer's contact details, and assigns the lead to the right property manager based on which listing they enquired about.

Within 90 seconds of the enquiry arriving, the person gets a personalised reply that includes their name, a reference to the specific property, and the property manager's name. It doesn't read like an automated message — it's built from the actual enquiry details, not a template blast.

For enquiries that arrive outside business hours — a significant share of the total — the response still goes out within 90 seconds, with a note that the property manager will follow up during business hours. No lead waits overnight unanswered.

What we had to figure out

• REA and Domain use different formats for the same information The two major portals each deliver enquiry data differently — different field names, different structures, different ways of referencing the listing. Getting the CRM records to populate consistently from both sources required building a normalisation step. New enquiries from either platform now produce identical-looking records.
• Facebook messages don't always mention the property People enquiring through Facebook often just write "Is this still available?" without specifying which listing. Rather than guessing, the system now sends a brief reply asking which property they're interested in. The full lead record gets created once confirmed.
• The first automated reply sounded automated Early testing showed several enquirers responding with "Is this a bot?" The message had the right information but a generic tone. We rewrote it to include the property manager's actual name, a specific reference to the listing, and a sentence that reflects the firm's local knowledge. The feedback went away entirely.