Fresh off the news that it struck a deal with Amazon, real estate mega company Realogy announced Tuesday that it was officially launching a voice-based digital assistant that operates on the retail giant’s Alexa platform.
The assistant is called “Agent X.” It can give real estate professionals details about their listings, create appointments using a calendar feature and deliver a personalized briefing that includes everything from news headlines to information on upcoming activities. Users interact with Agent X via voice commands, which are picked up by an Amazon device — such as the Echo — running the company’s Alexa personal assistant technology.
Agent X is what’s called an “Alexa Skill,” or app-like program designed for a specific task. Much like phone apps, there are Alexa Skills that perform a variety of tasks in various categories.
Realogy first announced Agent X in March, at its RGX conference in Las Vegas. At the time, the product was still in a beta testing stage.
Now, however, Agent X is available free of charge to agents affiliated with any of Realogy’s various brands. Those brands include Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate, Century 21, Coldwell Banker, Coldwell Banker NRT and ERA.
In a statement Tuesday, Realogy chief technology officer Dave Gordon said the company’s approach to “technology is about creating an open environment” that lets agents “access tools where and how they want.” He added that Agent X is the perfect example of that productivity enabling technology.”
Dave Gordon | Credit: PRNewsfoto/Realogy Holdings Corp.
The launch of Agent X comes just a week after Realogy and Amazon announced TurnKey, a new platform that aims to simplify the consumer real estate experience while also generating leads for Realogy agents. The platform lives on Amazon’s website and asks prospective homebuyers to fill out a brief questionnaire before connecting them to an agent.
Given the size of both Amazon and Realogy, the TurnKey partnership is potentially game-changing and briefly boosted the latter company’s otherwise underperforming stock.
The launch of Agent X also comes about a year and a half after Keller Williams unveiled Kelle, its own voice-activated personal assistant.
In its statement Tuesday, Realogy provided a series of quotes from real estate professionals who have used Agent X. Century 21 Clemens Group agent Adam Clemens said that the new tool “saves me time, it’s as simple as that.”
Adelina Palacios, of Coldwell Banker Residential Real Estate, said that “Agent X is out of this world.”
And BHGRE Grand View North broker-owner Lisa Paffrath said that “Agent X saves me the time and effort of taking out my laptop to access my tasks for the day.”