Inman

Doss, a voice-powered home search tool, gears up for national launch

Doss, an artificial intelligence voice-powered real estate assistant, will become available nationwide next week on desktop, iOS and Android. The technology delivers home searches by verbal command for real estate consumers while serving as a lead generation tool for agents.

For over a year Doss has been available in select markets for beta testing, which was a learning period for the company, says founder Bobby Bryant.

Founder Bobby Bryant

“Some of the things I heard were that [real estate agents] would like to see a search go beyond some of the queries,” Bryant said.

In other words, traditional online property searches involve users selecting checkboxes — price, no. of beds, home type — whereas Doss’s AI model opens the query pool to requests based on regional dialect. Doss has already learned the standard queries. It’s the minutiae that makes one neighborhood just slightly different from another that Bryant still plans to build out.

For example, “Doss, show me Boston homes in the ball-pahk district wicked close to good chowdah that cost a million bucks.” Doss would be able to learn that this buyer wants to see homes that cost $1 million within relative proximity to Fenway Park, but also near some good seafood restaurants. (That is a hypothetical scenario, and is by no means meant to offend anyone in good ol’ Beantown. Go Sox!)

As machine learning tech, Doss will become smarter as it collects more data, and Bryant sees the questions consumers pose as the most important data to learn from.

“Do you realize the data that’s in a question?” Bryant asked. “We’re able to capture all of that, track it … When you start talking about AI and machine learning, the more people that engage it the better.”

The way Doss works is if a consumer finds a home in a neighborhood, an agent registered to that neighborhood is notified. Doss charges a 30 percent referral fee if the lead results in a sale.

The software divvies leads based on an even smaller metric than a ZIP code and is therefore designed for agents active in their respective hyper-local markets. It’s in these niches that Bryant sees a way for Doss to learn effectively.

Along with voice recognition software, Bryant said a new free CRM will be available to agents on the platform.

Doss COO Chris Norton

“Doss has been developed with the idea of helping Realtors by removing the tedious tasks from there day, saving them time, and increasing their bottom line,” said Chris Norton, chief operating officer at Doss.

The proprietary CRM will provide “predictive analytics, tools for [the agents], and it will evolve over time.”

The company has also been working with the Beverly Carter Foundation to create a security feature for Doss. This acts as a “my brother’s keeper” approach. An agent that feels unsafe in any way can immediately ping nearby agents to alert them of distress.

Doss has been talking with Carl Carter Jr., son of former Arkansas real estate agent Beverly Carter, who was the victim of kidnapping that lead to her death in 2016.

Email Britt Chester