How brokerage Compass sold its 83,000 real estate agents to use more AI

When Compass recently debuted a new AI assistant to 83,000 real estate agents, the company’s senior leadership used every sales tactic in their arsenal to encourage adoption. 

The real-estate brokerage held a demo day to announce the launch of the new tool, called AI Assistant, which was watched live by more than 10,000 Compass agents. CEO Robert Reffkin, President of Growth Rory Golod, Chief Technology Officer Shay Artzi, and President Neda Navab were among the top executives who presented the new tool, alongside agents who had used it during the pilot and feedback phase.

Since then, senior leaders have visited the company’s local offices to promote AI Assistant. Corporate staff located at these regional offices were also trained on how to teach agents how to use the tool, which was designed to handle repetitive administrative tasks and nudge agents to pursue new sales opportunities.

“It takes a lot of work to get agents to actually adopt these tools,” says Golod.

Compass reports that within weeks of when it debuted its AI Assistant in July, about 15,000 agents generated more than 97,000 conversations.

Nine out of every ten agents across the entire industry report that they use AI today or are planning to do so, according to the trade association National Association of Realtors (NAR), with more than two-thirds reporting that they save at least one hour of work each week using AI. And yet, the NAR reports that the median age of a real estate agent is 57, presenting a challenge for adoption. Older Americans use AI chatbots less for work than younger employees, according to Pew Research.

Brokerages also have a very mixed track record of embracing new technologies, so there is some historical skepticism that tech-focused firms like Compass have to confront. They were slow to embrace the internet and mobile applications, leaving a big market opening for online real estate marketplaces like Zillow and Redfin to respond to homebuyers moving to digital channels at a faster clip than agents.

Another risk that looms is from the democratization of the services that real estate agents provide through the AI systems themselves. There are early indications of some home buyers and sellers experimenting with chatbots for do-it-yourself transactions to save money on fees.

One physical therapist assistant reported saving thousands using an AI platform for a home contract, while a man in Florida says he used ChatGPT to close on the sale of his home in five days for $100,000 more than what real estate agents estimated the property would fetch. Earlier this year, a technology reporter at the New York Times reported that he used AI almost entirely to sell a home in upstate New York.

Yet another issue involving AI in real estate is emerging regulation. In New York City, there’s a proposal that would require landlords, brokers, and online listing platforms to disclose when they’ve used AI to generate or digitally alter rental listing photos or videos.

Golod says he believes AI and technology are not able to replace the experience of an agent going into a seller’s living room, seeing the property and having a face-to-face conversation with them, and outlining a plan to sell it at the highest price possible with the least amount of hassle.

“To actually sell a home properly and help a buyer buy a home properly, it requires incredible judgment, high EQ, and relationships,” says Golod. “Those are just not things that AI has the capability of driving right now, and maybe not for a very, very long time, if ever.”

Over the past few years, building an AI platform internally at Compass has evolved as AI models have advanced. An earlier version of the AI tool, called Compass AI, mostly focused on giving agents ways to use the technology for content creation, including the generation of marketing materials and social media posts. 

But AI Assistant was conceptualized to act more like an actual human assistant and take real actions, including proactively producing a list of prospective clients that may be ready to sell a home and drafting a personalized note to reach out and reconnect. The tool is also voice-enabled, allowing agents to dictate notes while driving between appointments. AI can also compile a list of potential homes for a homebuyer, called Compass Collections, and share this data with agents and their customers.

“We moved in a similar path to the industry, moving from chat to agentic,” says Artzi. “We saw the value is really in agentic, and so it took us a while, because you want the AI to be aware of all the platforms of tools.”

AI Assistant connects 100 different real estate tools within a single platform, but Compass says it was designed in a manner that means agents just need to know how to prompt the AI tool to take an action, rather than understand any Compass-specific branding or software jargon.

“We’re starting to see this amazing shift where more and more agents, who in the past used parts of the platform but not all of it, are now really starting to take full advantage,” says Golod. “It’s going to drive a lot more usage.”

John Kell

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com