Can you send engaging, automatic lead responses without sounding like a robot?

When you think of automated text response, do you think of a thoughtful start to a relationship? Or do you think of a stark, robotic message?

Or, even worse, do you associate automated text alerts with spam and phishing scams?

Many companies and tech systems are integrating automated text response into their features — but they're not doing a great job of hiding the fact that the system is automatically generated. The result?

A choppy, impersonal customer experience that leaves a lot to be desired. Because while the Robot is a great move for wedding dance floors, it's a terrible follow-up and customer engagement tactic.

Automation is necessary. But can automated texts ever sound like a real person?

By following up with a web lead within five minutes, you're 9x more likely to convert them in the long run (InsideSales.com). But as a busy agent, you know you can't always follow the best practice of a five-minute lead response.

Whether you're driving, in a listing presentation or tied down at an open house, it can be challenging to feel like you're losing business opportunities because you aren't responding fast enough to inbound leads.

Automation is a great idea in theory, but the execution often resembles the banking alerts or phishing scams shown above. Is there any way to get around it?

Well, yes. Our friends at FiveStreet have developed a lead response system that mimics natural response by:

• Waiting about three minutes to respond to each lead alert (so it appears you spent time crafting a personal message)
• Using natural language that... wait for it... sounds like a real person wrote it

And while FiveStreet is fully customizable — so you can set up any message you want to deploy, like the one above from Sophie — the default message informs your potential client base that you're not available at the moment, but will reach out to them when you're free. The benefit of that, of course, is that it buys you time—whether you need five minutes or an hour and five minutes.

Best of all? Because 90 percent of text messages are read in the first three minutes (Mobile Squared), your target is likely to see your message and hold off on contacting other agents as they wait to speak with you.

FiveStreet's internal research reinforces that this is happening for thousands of agents across the country. There's a 40 percent response rate to texts and SMS that are sent from FiveStreet's automated lead response.

Learn more about how you can set FiveStreet up to respond to leads from dozens of leading sources, plus check out how you can customize the text message and email response for your business.

Need an overnight solution?

If you work with a lot of overseas clients or night owls, you may need to consider an overnight option that helps you bide time as your leads wait for you to wake up. Riley is a lead qualification and concierge service that uses a team of real-life customer specialists to answer requests 24 hours a day.

Whether you simply want someone to reply to your lead, informing them that you'll be in touch at 8am when you wake up, or to get into a more in-depth conversation before passing the lead to you in the morning, Riley's team can help.

Check out the service here.

Have you had success with automated or outsourced lead response?

We want to know what worked, what didn't and why. Tell us in the comments or drop us a line on our Facebook page, where we keep in touch with more than 35,000 top agents from across the country!

To view the original article, visit the Realtor.com Results blog.