A UK estate agency: valuation requests on WhatsApp, captured by a bot

The agency already ran its branches' calls through a main IVR on Genesys Cloud CX. Valuation requests were one option among many on that IVR, and outside office hours a caller who wanted to book one had nowhere to go but voicemail or the website. The agency wanted those requests to be captured at any hour, in the channel many customers now prefer, and to arrive in the system its valuations team already works from, so that no lead waited for someone to transcribe it.

There were firm constraints. Requests had to land in the agency's own lead system, which already drives its callback process, rather than in a separate tool. The connection between Genesys Cloud and that system had to satisfy the agency's security team. And the change had to fit around a contact centre that was already live, without disturbing the IVR every branch relied on.

Discovery ran from late March to early April 2025, and the requirements specification was signed in early April. QVCCS designed the customer journeys with the agency's digital, engineering and product teams, built and tested the bot, flows and integration, wrote the go-live method statement and supported each go-live.

1. Discovery with the agency's digital, engineering and product teams
2. A requirements specification covering every journey, schedule and fallback
3. One digital bot flow shared by WhatsApp and web messaging
4. A secure integration that posts each request into the agency's lead system
5. SMS deflection from the main IVR to WhatsApp
6. System and acceptance testing, then phased go-lives with rollback steps

WhatsApp and web messaging share a single message flow, so customers have the same experience whichever they choose and the agency maintains one design. The bot asks what it needs and nothing more: the property's postcode, whether the customer owns it, what they intend to do, from selling or letting to simply wanting to know its value, when they would like the valuation, and their name, email address and phone number. Questions about dates and postcodes show an example answer, and reminders after a pause are limited to a few, so customers are guided rather than chased.

A tracking reference can travel in the customer's first WhatsApp message when they arrive from a marketing link, so the agency can see which campaigns lead to conversations. Customers who start without one simply continue with the bot, so the reference helps reporting without ever getting in the way.

Once the bot has its answers, a priority rule chosen by the agency decides what happens next. In office hours, priority requests go straight to the valuations team through dedicated WhatsApp and web queues, with everything the bot captured shown on the agent's screen. Every other request, and every request out of hours, is posted to the agency's lead system through a Genesys Cloud data action, which triggers its existing callback process. The integration authenticates with OAuth and uses mutual TLS, so each side presents a trusted certificate to the other, and the bot tells the customer whether the request was received.

When an agent's callback does not reach the customer, the agent sends a WhatsApp template from Genesys Cloud. If the customer replies within the 72-hour conversation window, routing looks for the agent who sent it and returns the conversation to them. Customers waiting in the valuations queues hear their position and periodic updates every five minutes, and anything unanswered after an hour moves to a senior managers' queue, so no request is left waiting. Callers who choose the valuation option in the main IVR from a UK mobile receive an SMS with a link that opens WhatsApp with a ready-written message, and other callers are directed to the website.

The work went live in phases, each with its own method statement, test steps and rollback. On 10 July 2025, WhatsApp click-to-chat went live on the agency's website in the morning, and SMS deflection went live in the main IVR that evening, outside the busiest hours. Web messaging followed a short while later through a change request, so the agency could introduce each channel when it was ready. Go-live had moved from the original plan to fit when the agency's lead-system API was ready for production use; the Genesys Cloud configuration was complete and tested in the meantime.

The priority path was switched on, so in-hours priority requests reach the valuations team in conversation while everything else flows into the lead system automatically. Valuation requests can now be made at any hour, in the customer's choice of channel, and arrive where the agency's team already works.

• One bot flow for WhatsApp and web messaging
• Requests posted to the agency's lead system over OAuth and mutual TLS
• Priority routing in hours, lead capture at any hour
• WhatsApp follow-up that returns replies to the agent who sent them
• SMS deflection from the main IVR to WhatsApp, live on 10 July 2025